Using no tools other than his fingernails, Suhas Tavkar Practices the rare and ancient art of nail drawing-embossing detailed bas-reliefs in paper.
Draftsmen sometimes cite the immediacy of drawing as one of its core appeals-nothing but a pencil or pen comes between the artist and his or her creation. New York City artist Suhas Tavkar takes the immediacy of drawing a step further. He practices the art of nakha chitra, or nail drawing, which leaves absolutely nothing between artist and artwork. His tools are his fingernails, which he uses to emboss drawings in paper. “The fingernail is the God-given basic tool to write and draw,” Tavkar says. “There’s a connection between nail and creation.”

Although its origins are lost in antiquity, nakha chitra is an ancient art. It dates back at least to the 5th century, by which time Kalidasa-the great playwright and poet of the Sanskrit language-had mentioned nail drawing in his play The Recognition of Sakuntala. Nail drawing predates the invention of paper, as fingernails can be used to emboss various natural materials. “The art of etching and writing may have started with a fingernail on a lotus leaf, banana leaf, or soft tree bark,” says Tavkar. “This was used for early writing, communication, and drawing.”

To create a nail drawing, Tavkar uses the thumb and middle finger of his right hand to emboss lines in paper. Unlike most art forms, in which the surface is stationary and the mark-making tool moves across it, in nakha chitra the drawing instruments remain relatively stationary while the second hand pulls and rotates the paper through the grip of the fingernails. By varying how intensely the fingers of his right hand mark the paper. Tavkar can control the properties of the resulting lines. Among other effects, he can raise sections of paper by scoring identical shapes on both sides and then gently pushing the secions up. Using this technique, Tavkar can raise sections within other sections, resulting the multilayered bas-reliefs.

The artist is proud of this uncommon art form. “I like that people can see in my art something different than in other artists’ work. There are millions of people who can draw or make sculpture, but all with the same tools.” Although nakha chitra is an ancient form of Indian art, its history is largely unknown. It has traditionally been a form of folk art, not fine art, so nail drawing have rarely been preserved, and historical examples are few. Today the art is most prevalent in India’s southern and western states-including Maharashtra and its capital city of Mumbai, where Tavkar grew up-but it is very rare. When learned, it is mostly used as a casual pastime, and few people, if any, have made nail drawing their primary occupation. Tavkar learned the term nakha chitra-which an art association in India contacted him after finding his website.

The art of nail drawing has been passed down through Tavkar’s family. Suhas learned it from his father, Anant Tavkar, but the two men’s styles are not identical. Anant’s drawings-such as Ear, drawn during a 1991 visit to New York City-achieve gentle effects reminiscent of sculpted clay. Suhas’ drawings, in contrast, have harder edges and when strongly lit produce dramatic chiaroscuro effects.

Tavkar’s interest in art began early. “When I was a child, in kindergarten. I loved to draw,” he says. “When they would ask me what I wanted to do, I would say, ‘I want to be an artist.’” Tavkar soon took up nail drawing, recalling that when he traveled by tram or bus he would get a 1″-x-3″ ticket, blank on one side, that he would use to emboss flowers or simple designs. As a teenager, he would emboss friends’ names or portraits into ordinary paper or metal foil from cigarette boxes. He learned calligraphy in his native language of Marathi and in English, and he can now write calligraphy in most major world languages. Indeed, in the 1980s and 1990s, much of the interest in Tavkar’s art came not from the fine-art world but from the graphic-design industry, and Tavkar’s nail drawings were featured in the typography magazine Upper & Lower Case in 1984. Before his retirement from graphic design in 2007, Tavkar sometimes employed his nail drawing in his advertising work, embossing small logos or letters, which could be dyed different colors.

His drawings encompass a diverse range of subjects, the most prevalent being Hindu iconography. Many of Tavkar’s drawings of Hindu deities are based on ancient sculptures of unknown origin, which have appealed to him since he was young. “I got inspiration during my childhood to draw ancient sculptures,” He says. “We don’t know who created them; we never found the real artists’ names. They are thousands of years old. I feel that I should bring those sculptures onto a piece of paper, without tools, and with nails.” The artist cites several sources of inspiration apart from Hindu subjects, such as his family’s tradition of fingernail embossing, as well as the artwork of Michelangelo. Other subject matter Tavkar has depicted includes animals, nudes, and classic Western subjects such as biblical figures and ballerinas-the last of which let to an exhibition of Tavkar’s artwork in the ballet gallery of Lincoln Center. He has embossed portraits of figures as diverse as Michelangelo and President Obama, and he continues his interest in calligraphy by embossing holy Hindu mantras, written in Sanskrit, on soft copper.

Tavkar’s fingernails are not dramatically long-he keeps the nails of his right hand at 1/8 of an inch, nothing that longer nails are not hard enough to produce good impressions. He gives his nails no special treatment beyond sharpening them with a file or sand paper. But the end of a drawing, his fingernail is worn to a different shape from how it began. “When working,” he says, “after two or three hours, my nail starts getting heavier, and I won’t be able to get the same line. Then I have to file it again.”

A nail drawing begins with a light pencil drawing on the back of the paper. This initial sketch outlines the major shapes but does not include all details. During embossing, the fingers of the stationary drawing hand sometimes block the view of the pencil sketch, so Tavkar relies on it only as a rough guide.

Depending on the size of a piece and the degree of detail, a drawing takes up to six hours to finish. “It depends upon the day,” he says. “it’s not like I can draw really fine art at any time. Some days, though, my thumb is in really good shape.” In generally, figures take the longest to complete, and Tavkar cities Waterpot Lady as a piece that took a particularly long time, largely because of the details on the figure’s hands and face. Tavkar often begins by embossing a foot or a leg and gradually moving up the paper from bottom to top. “It’s really difficult, actually,” he says. “In any drawing, people want to go from top to bottom.”

After a drawing is complete, Tavkar often sets it aside for several months and later makes improvements or uses it as inspiration for new pieces. He likes his drawings to be unique, however, and he rarely reproduces a design. He notes that even if he wants to make multiple copies of an image. It’s not easy. “I can try to make another piece,” Tavkar says, “but it’s not going to be exactly the same. It’s not die-cut; it’s always one of a kind.”

Most of the artist’s drawings measure less than 5″ x 7″ but to challenge himself, he has made drawings as large as 8″ x 10″, for which he must delicately fold the paper as he is embossing. Tavkar prefers Strathmore 2-ply paper because of its heavy grain. “I like the effect,” Tavkar says, “It looks like a carving done on a piece of rock.” If he needs a softer surface, he uses Lana paper.

One of the greatest difficulties presented by nakha chitra is its total lack of erasability. According to Tavkar, “Once the mistake is there, once the line is on the paper, it is impossible to erase. In any embossing, if a line goes wrong I won’t be able to press down and correct it; I have to do it all over. It will never vanish, it will never be straight again.”

Tavkar is eager to spread knowledge of nail drawing. “I want to educate people and let them know that this kind of art still exists in the world,” he says, “According to me, anybody can draw with the fingernail.” Nail drawing is a rare art form that can be both created and appreciated through touch, and in India it has received some publicity regarding its potential for use with the blind, who can use nakha chitra to create detailed pictures and abstract geometrical designs. “If I draw a small animal or portrait, blind people can touch it and ‘see’ it,” Tavkar Says.

Although it takes years to master nakha chitra, Tavkar says that a beginner can learn to draw simple shapes and pictures in a matter of hours. “Just to see and to learn it is not difficult.” He says, Tavkar says that so far, his children have not been interested in taking up their father’s art. “It takes too much time,” he says. “You need to be dedicated to your work. You need devotion. And you need to concentrate. It’s like meditation. When you meditate, you close your eyes and try to concentrate on something. It’s the same thing when you draw with your fingernail. It’s your own tool, and you have to put your mind into it and slowly build up your art.”

Mumbai: This one was a dream come true for American artist Gilbert Young, when he presented a double portrait of president Barack Obama at the Annual NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) convention in Ohio. And the president liked it so much that he specially signed the portrait.
Says Young, “The President liked my portrait and said ‘You have made me look good’. And when I handed my card to president Obama, he said he knew my work and it was all worth it. He told the crowd that I was a legend. I felt I’d received the greatest honour of my artistic life.”
Young is looking at Indian collectors and the Indian art market to sell this work of his. He has also hired an Indian-owned Singapore-based investment company. Young confirms, “India is one of the most progressive countries in the world today and I think there are many real art lovers in the country.”
He adds, “Also, I personally like Indian art — it is culturally driven and extremely rich in heritage. One of my favourite Indian artists is Amrita Shergill and it’s unfortunate that she died young.” Ask him why he wants to sell this painting? “I feel it is important to give back to the communities, organisations and all the support forces that have been with me until here,” he explains.
Young was asked to create the portrait to present to him at the convention. “Through this portrait I am trying to portray the hope that president Obama has given the world.”

These days paintings have become the soul of many a well-decorated home or office. Paintings say a great deal about the character of the owner, and a collection of paintings brings an extraordinary sense of originality or uniqueness to a house or a corporate office
Art market watchers in 2004 were a bit surprised when a Picasso painting, ‘Boy with a Pipe’ soared to a record price of $102 million, becoming the most expensive painting ever sold at an auction. But just a few years later, $100 million works of art aren’t all that unusual. Collectors now days are ready to pay as high as $130 million and $140 million for works by MF Hussain, Gustav Klimt, and Jackson Pollock.

Even contemporary artists – who don’t normally command stratospheric prices, mostly because their work hasn’t been tested over time – are edging into unknown territory. Recently at Sotheby’s the top performing lots were Alexander Calder’s ‘Ebony Sticks in Semi-Circle’ which sold for $3,050,000 against an estimate of $1,000,000-$1,500,000 and Richard Prince’s ‘Can You Imagine’ which sold for $1,150,000 against an estimate of $600,000-$800,000. The most expensive work was Jeff Koons ‘Baroque Egg with Bow’ which failed to break the low estimate selling for $4,800,000 against an estimate of $6,000,000 – $8,000,000 followed by the cover lot, Martin Kippenberger’s ‘Untitled’, which scraped in just above the low estimate selling for $3,600,000.

An ink and pastel composition by Jogen Chowdhury fetched $609,629 (Rs 2.9 crore) at a sale of Indian art in London, setting a world auction record for the artist from Bengal. Says Brian Simons a contemporary artist of repute, “Inspite of the economic crunch everywhere, I’ve had the best year ever so far, sold more paintings thus far than in the same period of any other year. Sales through galleries are about the same and haven’t seen any change. More sales via the website though. The art business is difficult to understand and often doesn’t follow the same trends as other businesses. Most sales are from individuals.”

As the art market continues its bullish run, many collectors are wondering how prices became so insane – and how high they can go. Great paintings by celebrated artists have always drawn high prices frequently from experienced collectors looking for that one special piece to complete a collection.
“A billionaire thinks on a different level,” says Tripat Kalra, an India based gallerist. “If he thinks a painting is a cultural icon, $100 million is not a bad price.”

One manifestation of the art market’s broad appeal: increased visibility on the Internet. One site, run by British mega-collector Charles Saatchi, lets artists show and sell their work for free; the site has attracted more than 65,000 artists and reportedly gets up to 900,000 unique visitors a month. Artbyus.com is another such site to mention which enables artists to showcase their work at nominal fees.

Wet Canvas is an online living for artists where artists from different parts of the world meet and exchange ideas about art business and marketing art. Prosenjit Roy, a Kolkata-based artist and a moderator with Wet Canvas forum points out that fine art doesn’t just decorate the walls. It suggests sophistication. Particularly for newly minted billionaires, he says, “A signature painting is a status buy. A big flat-screen home theatre doesn’t quite do it.”

RB Bhaskaran, ex chairman Lalit Kala Akademi, and a painter-printmaker of repute says the sky rocketing prices have convinced a lot of people that “art is an investment vehicle like any other.”

Says Pauline Adair, an Australian painter of repute, “Art investments are just as safe as anything else these days. So more people are going for that.” Meanwhile, high-profile art fairs have taken root in New York, London, Shanghai, Delhi and other big cities. Trendy gallery districts are proliferating. Public auctions have become dramatic spectacles frequented by mysterious anonymous bidders – an Indian industrialist perhaps, or a Bahrain based sheikh – and are receiving widespread media attention.

Says Shuvaprassanna, well-known Indian painter whose works sell in international markets, “Art market continues to sustain in spite of the economic downturn.” He adds, “The market is challenging and still buoyant for some works, though not for all. Recession has not affected art making or pricing of art till now and artists who exhibit abroad are doing very well. Price ranges are in six figures.”

Finally sums up BB Sikdar, an artiste of repute who has held exhibitions both in India and abroad, “No one will deny the profound inter-relation of artist and community. The artist depends on the community – takes his tone, his tempo, his intensity from the society of which he is a member and the society, in turn, is paying back the artist by buying their works at exorbitant prices.” He adds, “But it’s not money, it’s recognition that pleases him. Though it is a trend these days, yet a painting should not be judged by its price or an economic angle.”

The apprentice/master relationship is a long established tradition in the art world, and it is not unknown that artists often employ assistants in the production of their work. Employing studio assistants has been considered practical and in many instances necessary for artists throughout the centuries. Is there still a sense of mentoring present in the studio hierarchy for today’s contemporary artists? Has mentoring become obsolete in studios and training left for BFA and MFA programs?

 
Historically, studio assistants were needed in order to complete demands for commissions that could not promptly be created entirely by the master. Take for example Leonardo da Vinci, an art historical “all star.” Da Vinci himself was an assistant for Andrea del Verrocchio. While helping Verrocchio complete commissioned works, da Vinci was able to develop his own style, a basis for his eventual mastery of drawing and painting. “Verrocchio’s studio no doubt encouraged thorough knowledge of perspective, anatomy, even botany. With Leonardo scientific and biological interests were eventually to swamp his interest in painting. Verrocchio’s influence on Leonardo allowed for positive exposure without stifling his own career.

 
Some contemporary artists take the same approach. Rather, the benefits for today’s assistants come in the form of monetary remuneration and business experience. Many of the assistants already have several years of technical training and simply need a reliable source of income. The mentoring aspect of studio assistants has become relatively obsolete as their tasks given to them reflect the technicality of production rather than evolvement of an artistic idea.
By creating a persona, artists don’t need to physically make the art they sign their name to. In all actuality, their celebrity status is fortified by their distance from the tediousness of creation. If we take today’s culture and assert that at least the art world is doing as it has always done (reflecting and documenting the culture from which it was produced)

The decision about how to best recognize or embody the contributions of these anonymous artists rests squarely on the shoulders of the artist who employs them. The fact remains that artist assistants, no matter their personal goals, are necessarily artists themselves. They choose the art studio to make a living and are working in different capacities within a space that holds limitless potential for growth and change. Their contributions are as varied as the tasks that are required of them – what differs most significantly is how their contributions are acknowledged.

Contemporary art refers to the art that has been and still continues to be created during our lifetime. Contemporary form of art is quite different from Modern art, which was art created by the Impressionists from around 1880 until the 1970s. However, there is some overlapping in terms of years when it comes to Modern art and the art of today. But still, both forms of art are considered to be separate, and each occupies its own space in the history of art.
On the other hand, art that was created from the 1970s until present time is labeled as contemporary. The reason that 1970 is used as the cutoff time for the two start forms is because terms like Postmodern and Postmodernism became popular around that time. Also, the 1970s was the last time when the last easily classifiable artistic movements occurred. Basically we can say that contemporary artists work on art movements that cannot be classified as the number of artists in any movement is very few to be actually labeled as a movement.
However, it must also be added that when it comes to art, any emerging movement is very difficult to classify. Also, the art of today is considered to be more socially conscious compared to any era in the past. In the last 40 years, the art that has been created has been connected to some issue. In fact, artists have used their artwork to raise awareness about major issues like multiculturalism, globalization, AIDS, bio-engineering and feminism.

Numbers and theories and equations are all well enough. They have their uses, but those uses can extend only so far. That is something a team at
Cass Business School, London, seems to have ignored in its attempt to come up with a formula that can tell moviemakers if the sequel to any film will be a success or not. It is a hugely overambitious attempt, destined to fail.

Certainly, logic and reason can take one up to a certain point. But beyond that, the final effort is more often than not a leap of intuition, particularly when it comes to matters of art. Even when scientific or mathematical boundaries are being pushed, for that matter, it is often the same. The story of Isaac Newton and apple is known well enough. Many people have seen apples falling from trees, but it was Newton who made the leap which related the force pulling the apple down to that which keeps the moon in orbit. Or take Srinivasa Ramanujan, India’s greatest mathematical talent. Entirely self-taught, he relied far more on intuitive leaps than process, often unable to explain his own approach.

What’s true for science is even more true for art, even at the best of times an extremely subjective endeavour. One man’s Picasso may well be another man’s graffiti. As for predicting box-office success, one has only to look at past box-office results. Hugely hyped, well-funded movies have sunk without a trace while small, unheralded productions made on a shoestring budget have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars.

No formula can account for such workings of the mind. It cannot predict the shape that a director will give his artistic vision or the manner in which others will perceive it. The head of the team that devised the formula has said that the movie industry is one of dreams and illusions. He is correct. Whether a movie will catch on with a mass audience cannot be captured by cold numbers and mathematical formulae, as these cannot encompass the subjective.

BROOKLYN, NY – Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we’d never been here for a story before, but something drew us to North 6th Street and, ultimately, you can blame that on the boogie. At a second story brownstone inside the small 600 square foot “Figureworks” Gallery, Neverland is ever-present. What can only be called the ” King of Pop Art exhibits”, its part show, part shrine. Welcome to the Cult of Michael Jackson. Colorado native turned Brooklyn artist Rusel Parish began painting the collection three years ago. “I am the minister of the Cult of Michael Jackson,” Parish smirked, “and this is the chapel where you can get ”off the wall”, come out and look at the ”man in the mirror” and ”make that change.”

What was designed to coincide with Jackson’s world concert tour has, in his passing, become a living tribute drawing fans to Williamsburg from all over. “I Think what’s so interesting about Michael Jackson is he transcends so many decades, so many people can relate to different Michael Jacksons,” Parish said. The “cult” is really more of a fan club, membership is attained by clicking on a web site. Cult members can peruse the gallery where there are screen prints, sculptures, and then there are the “Scriptures” — posted on the walls on faux parchment, are what’s known as “The 10 laws of the Boogie.” Parish has interpreted Jackson’s lyrics into teachings, “It kind of takes each song and kind of gives the tenet and principle of the song.” Parish added, “I took the lyrics and brought it into a sort of scriptural language.” Randall Harris is the owner of Figureworks Gallery, he’s the one who believed that Jackson art would have “drawing power.” Harris said “there are skeptics that come through and by the time they leave they’re so impressed with the amount of dedication and quality of work and the whole chapel itself as being really kind of an irreverent place to really sit there and take in Michael Jackson’s life.”

From the ”Off the Wall” era to ”Billy Jean” to ”Dangerous” every each step of the moon walker’s career is covered, “they’re great to see and if you’re an MJ fan on any level one of these hits you,” said Marisa Sage, a self proclaimed Michael Jackson fanatic. And at the gallery, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white — chocolate, Parish has enshrined the pop icon in confection form too. “When you think of Michael Jackson you think of branding or merchandising, something he did very successfully throughout his life so its just kind of building into that concept,” Parish said.

In the chapel the “cult members” say it Jackson’s music that is their gospel, “his ability to connect with people all around the world is just amazing, I haven’t seen it in any artist,” said Prenay Adsule, a 24 year old cult member who is as a medical student from Mumbai. Adsule made it a point to see the exhibit as soon as he got off the plane and arrived in New York, “he’ll live on, Michael Jackson will live forever!.” Parish adds, “He transcends boundaries and he brings people together, I think its kind of a miraculous thing.” Parish sums up his intricate collection simply, “it is about the boogie!”

World-famous as a capital of fashion and design, Italy’s second city has a more modest reputation for cultural heritage. Here in the country’s business and financial center, local pride focuses on contemporary success rather than past glory. And once visitors have taken in the many-spired Late Gothic cathedral, Leonardo’s mural of “The Last Supper,” and maybe a performance at La Scala, they tend to move on rapidly to the richer terrain of Venice, Florence or Rome.
But no city can have played so influential a role in the history of the Italian peninsula, from Roman times onward, without storing up its share of treasure along the way.
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana, which opened as one of Europe’s first public libraries in 1609, would rank as a major tourist attraction in almost any other country. Its art gallery features paintings by Leonardo, Botticelli, Titian, Caravaggio and the full-scale “cartoon” (or preparatory drawing) for Raphael’s monumental fresco of “The School of Athens” in the Vatican Museums.
At least as precious, but ordinarily visible only to scholars, is the Ambrosiana’s collection of manuscripts and rare printed books. Holdings include a fifth-century illuminated copy of Homer’s Iliad and a 14th-century edition of the works of Virgil, with hand-written annotations by the Renaissance poet Petrarch. Yet no item in the library’s possession can be more intriguing to experts and laymen alike than Leonardo’s Atlantic Codex.
With 1,119 pages of drawings and notes, almost all of them in Leonardo’s own hand, the Atlantic Codex is by far the largest set of works by the archetype of universal genius. Leonardo’s more famous Codex Leicester, currently the property of Bill Gates, is only 72 pages long.
“Codex” simply means a bound manuscript, and for more than four centuries the contents of this one remained in book form. Even after its custodians started splitting it up into 12 volumes beginning in the 1960s, they could not display more than a dozen pages at a time or reproduce the contents without distortions. The decision last year by the Ambrosiana’s prefect, Msgr. Franco Buzzi, to free all the leaves from their bindings has thus vastly expanded the world’s access to Leonardo’s legacy.
The Ambrosiana will be exhibiting the entire Codex over the course of the next six years, 44 or 45 pages at a time for three months at a stretch—the longest that international archival norms will allow such documents to be exposed to light. This approach offers the advantage of letting visitors focus on a manageable, topically organized selection from a body of work whose range encompasses, among many other subjects, anatomy, optics, geography, music and flight.
The library, which was founded by a cardinal, is still run by Catholic priests, and visiting this show can feel a bit like stepping into a shrine. With portraits of saintly authors hanging overhead, the Codex pages sit inside temperature-controlled cases like holy relics in their reliquaries, glowing dimly in 20 lumens of indirect light. Piped-in recordings of Gregorian chant add to the devotional ambience.
Only half of the exhibit is actually at the Ambrosiana; the rest is found in an even more ecclesiastical setting, the nearby sacristy of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, part of the same complex that houses Leonardo’s “The Last Supper.”
All this religious context is incongruous, albeit in a characteristically Renaissance way, since the images themselves couldn’t be more profane. The first show, which opened in September and closes early next month, is dedicated to Leonardo’s designs for artillery and military architecture, including siege engines, cannons, fortresses and moats.
Whatever their virtues as exercises in engineering (not obvious in every case to the untutored eye), these drawings of deadly machines are arresting for their sheer beauty.
What the exhibition catalog describes as a “shower of projectiles” passing over a crenellated fortress wall seems as artful as a fireworks display. Typical of Leonardo’s drawings, where even fragmentary objects exemplify symmetry and coherence, this image also has a thoroughly organic feel, as if the explosions were a kind of flowering. A graceful sketch of a rearing horse on the same page fits naturally beside it.
The highlight of this show, as much for the improbable delight it inspires as for its bravura execution, is a drawing of shells emerging, amid clouds of almost downy smoke, from the mouths of two squat mortars. At the other end of the arc described by their flight, like the climax of a dazzling magic trick, the shells explode and discharge bouquets of smaller projectiles. So exuberant an image of violence would be at home in an exquisite children’s book.
As future exhibitions in this series will show, the inventions displayed on the pages of the Atlantic Codex—such as innovative pumps and excavators, a self-propelled car, machines for flying and walking on water—would seem fanciful were they not so meticulously detailed and logically worked out.
One gets the feeling that the same relentless, overflowing imagination that conceived of these ingenious contraptions simply couldn’t help making them beautiful in the bargain, as if driven by some sort of aesthetic hyperactivity. Yet it’s clear, in observing the delicate lines and fine shading with which Leonardo portrayed even as unlovely a subject as a defensive system for flooding underground tunnels, that the very beauty of the rendering helps to make it intelligible, and therefore useful.
Writing in the Atlantic Codex itself, Leonardo explicitly affirmed the harmony of pleasure and practicality. “There cannot be beauty and utility?” he asked rhetorically, then answered himself by invoking two of his own great subjects—”fortresses and men.”

The Street Painting Artist

Artists from the different part of the globe go to street painting festivals – to paint it red. With chalks, pastels and paints in their hand, artists transform the street into a palate for all.

Jay Schwartz during an interview said that “Street painting is an extension of my fine art background. My initial exposure to the medium was as a student at UCSB. I stumbled into the role of street painter by accident. The purity, tradition, and inspirational qualities are my main attractions to the medium. My approach to the street as canvas is much like any other visual communication problem: start with a strategy (subject matter, diagrams, keylines, etc.) and infuse my style into the project, all the while trying to maintain an overall view of the big picture. For the most part street painting is unique, mainly because of the physicality of the medium. I make a lot of my own chalks, so I can use colors that can’t be reproduced through any other medium.”

One of the best among street painters is Manfred Stader who specialized himself in pastel. It is with self-manufactured pastel chalks that he paints copies of masters like Corregio, Bronzino, Bouguereau and many others.

Edgar Mueller, also a renowned street painter, has been in the craft for more than 15 years. During this time he created a lot of paintings. A collection of his paintings gives a view of his most beautiful ideas as an artist. Street painting 3D

Wenner, a master street painter, uses anamorphic principle in his paintings. Anamorphism is the style used in the seventeenth century which combines architectural elements with illusionistic painting forming an extraordinary combined image. Wenner’s unique and innovative use of this creates unforgettable images that combine the painted surface with its surroundings into a single composition.

How do you treat the street as a “canvas”? Well, it depends on what approach you will use. Those who are aspiring to become a popular street painter you can have the aforementioned artists as your inspiration or you can create your own style for that matter.