World Inferno Friendship Society

I was commissioned by the punk band World Inferno Friendship Society to paint a banner for their halloween concert at the Warsaw Concert Hall in brooklyn. Derived from the conceptual/lyrical content of the music, the imagery is mimicking the Citizen Kane election scene, with a pumpkin puppet as the politician. Updated the Applied section of the commissioned work website.

Live photo by Konstantin Sergeyev

Another large scale project I had fun with recently was helping Sean Mellyn work on a mural he's creating for Crown Maple Farm. I was doing some painting in the early layers of the initial image, here are a couple of process photos:

Long story short.

Besides my own art I have been busy with a lot of commercial projects in the past year. After graduating I really wanted to support myself using art related jobs.

Though commissioned, I try to have fun with these works, by exploiting my interests outside the primary direction: moments in art history/specific artists/ purely technical, esthetic, or conceptual aspects/various mediums (interior design, publication, film).

I've been working on a separate website, dedicated to serve as a portfolio of my commissioned projects.

There is a whole bunch of stuff, so I'll break it up into separate posts.
Details below...

Woodland

In this project I got to explore interior design, and working with a specific predetermined aesthetic. The Brooklyn restaurant Woodland commissioned me to make images for decorating the environment. The work is themed around forest/trees, and is following an earthly palette of umber, sienna, and ocher, with limited color. I used this as a personal study of some of my favorite tree painters/paintings: Ivan Shishkin, Andrew Wyeth, Alexei Savrasov, Caspar David Friedrich.

This is the painting for the central area of the restaurant:

The following three mural paintings serve as bathroom decoration:

Repino

This is as series of landscapes depicting nature in the area surrounding my country house outside St. Petersburg (thus the name). The formal qualities are primarily influenced by the hallmark of russian landscape painting with a slight alteration of the palette towards cooler notes.

Recollection

This painting arose from a conversation about the limitations of perception and the fragmented nature of memory. I tied the concept to a landscape using photos of a mountain taken by me during a trip a couple of years ago. Absurd idea of consistency within a broken space is implied by the juxtaposition of using straight lines, and repeating patterns on the surface, while still keeping some recognizable visual elements. 

Applied

In this section I will display the projects that were created to function as applied art for media (publication, film, etc.)

Mouth

This is an illustration to a story by my fellow SVA graduate Kelsey Donald. An aspiring writer and horror genre enthusiast, who's put together a book of short stories following a young couple as they find themselves inextricably linked to a series of paranormal events. To support her project and get a poster of the drawing visit the Kickstarter page.

Red Dust

I partook in a production of a short film that was shot for broadcast on selected music cable channels in Asian countries, and to be edited into a music video. Since the plot involved a young artist some of my early and more recent art was used for the visuals. I worked with the director, to enhance the narrative with a few things. Painted a wheelchair that belongs to the protagonist.

Made a couple of quick paintings to supplement the storyline.

Dark Ages

Was hired by a musician to visualize his concepts, for a book that is coming out in conjunction with the new album. Reworked an existing logo design.

Cover.

Background image to go behind the text.

A couple of illustrations.

In No Place

Worked on a short documentary by Gabriel Long, offering a unique look at elements of the constitution and the law that are often obscured or forgotten despite their fundamental importance to our society. The illustrations that I made captured specific moments of the story, told to the viewer through the interview with Stephen Oleskey. After being pulled over by police, and forced to stand trial during a civil rights campaign in 66, he started a career that would include advocacy work, eventually taking on a case representing six men being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
These drawings were adjusted in aftereffects, to imply movement and atmosphere.  Here are a few examples of the quick/stylized illustrations.