"Post Card Series"

I'm doing a new project where I create as many watercolor postcards as possible for the remaining of the year. I plan on mailing watercolors to anyone who wants one. I will write a personalized thought on the back of each card. If you wish to participate in this project please email me a portrait you would like done and your address at leah.brown@ttu.edu or leave a comment.
Example: this is a postcard I made for my mom

The back has this quote written on it, "The children have been a wonderful gift to me, and I'm thankful to have once again seen our world through their eyes. They restore my faith in the family's future." Jackie Kennedy

"The Perfect Country and Western Painting" 2013

         For this project Jeff had to create a painting based on David Allen Coe's song "The Perfect Country and Western Song". This painting had to include: getting drunk, jail, Mamma, a bad breakup, a train and a truck. This seemed like a ridiculous amount of imagery to include in one painting, so I wrote a poem that I thought followed the theme of many country western songs sung by girls and all the imagery he asked to include. 

Watercolor Series

Angelina Jolie

Marilyn Monroe

Amelia Earhart

Madonna

Ben Harper

Art Nouveau

Brad Pitt

Hedy Lamarr

Collaboration with Jeff

"Sunken Treasure" 2013

I painted this piece on top of a thrift store painting. I should of taken a picture before I painted on this piece. Alas, hindsight is 20x20. Regardless, the painting was entirely yellow, orange and brown. My professor said as soon as he saw it, "Whew! Thats a lot of yellow!" I decided to balance it out with some blue. I added all the blue and green, the whale and the street lamp. I titled it sunken treasure because of the subject matter and my professor's clever style of reviving "sunken" art into treasures again.

"If A Tree Falls..." 2013

The assignment for this piece was to illustrate the song written by our visiting artist, Hill Snider. The song discusses the idea of being heard in a forest when no one is there. This idea seemed surreal to me, as if the forest itself was listening. Which is actually a sensation I feel in forests and the ocean, you are surrounded by life without a soul in sight. I used the Easter Island heads as the model for the tree in the forefront because of the mystery these statues hold. I used Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne" as the model for the trees in the background because it illustrates a classic mythological tale.

"Balancing Act" 2013

I did this piece as sort of a surrealist approach to my work. I am intrigued by the reality of imagination in surrealism. I suppose if I was to tag this piece with some concept it would be that balancing act we all walk in relationships between honesty and compassion, self-sacrifice and self-respect.

"Cut Her Out in Little Stars" 2013

I have this twisted obsession with tragic love stories. The title of this piece is based on a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.” 

This piece illustrates my the lyrics to my favorite song Remembering Sunday Remembering Sunday. The lyrics tell the story of a boy looking for a prostitute he fell in love with after one night. He goes from house to house with her photo, trying to find her, haunted by her memory. The song ends with a girl singing an apology for leaving him by suicide. 

The backdrop for these illustrations are the pages of a short story written by O. Henry, The Furnished Room. In this story O. Henry tells of a boy looking for an actress he fell in love with in Greenwich Village. He goes from apartment to apartment in search of her. In the last room he stays in he looses his grip on sanity because he can sense and smell her everywhere. He kills himself. The story ends with the hotel owner discussing how odd two suicides should occur in the same room two nights in a row. The boy's love had killed herself in the same room the day before.

The Shakespeare quote seemed to pinpoint this idea of being surrounded by a love and unable to obtain it. My style drew from Roy Lichtenstein's work.

Junction Experience: Project 5

This is a collaborative piece. My partner did everything in black and white. I did everything in color.

Junction Experience: Project 4

I felt this poster was way too fitting to not be a self-portrait. Lets sum up the similarities:

1. Short blonde hair.

2. Slender

3. Flapper at heart

4. Approaching graduation

5. She's lighting her cigarette with her diploma. Awesome.

This piece is ink and acrylic paint on velum.

Junction Experience: Project 3

My attempted at the balance between abstraction and reality...

Junction Experience: Project 2

I worked about 12 hours straight on this painting. It was worth it though. Ive always wanted to study the way light plays on water.

Junction Experience: Project 1