Michael Jackson with Curls

This is my latest celebrity painting done in oils using shades of blue. It's another Michael Jackson painting. I couldn't help myself, folks. I love the King of Pop and I just felt the need to paint him again, though this time I chose a different decade.

I've always loved how Michael looked with curls, and I always loved him wearing his trademark Fedora. So that's the look I chose for this painting, which puts him sometime in the 90's here.  In my previous  MJ in Shades painting, Michael's face is from around 2007, so now I have two different portraits from two different time periods, and I just need to find a place to put them in my office. My home office has a Hollywood/Celebrity theme...so they will both fit in nicely.

OK, time for me to Beat It, Billie Jean.  ;)

Michael Jackson in Shades

All week long I've been working on a new celebrity painting in oils. I've been wanting to do Michael Jackson for awhile. Finally found a couple of photos I wanted to work from, and this one is the result. The first animated photo below shows the painting in process from start to finish. This is the first time I've taken photos of one of my paintings in progress, so thought it would be fun for this. The second image is a static image of the final results.

I really love how this turned out, especially considering this is the first time I've done an oil painting in almost 3 years! It's not perfect, but I love it anyway. And it's taken me a long time to learn to stop dinking with a painting at a certain point...otherwise you can just go too far and mess things up worse (and that's exactly what happens when I don't stop when I should)! I'll be doing another painting of MJ too, using a photo of him from a different time period as a reference. He's going to have curls in that painting. Hopefully I'm as pleased with that one when I'm finished as I am with this one. Curls are not easy! Wish me luck.

Nicolas Cage

I absolutely love Nicolas Cage. He is a wonderful actor and has been in some of my all time favorite films (The Rock, Con Air, Peggy Sue Got Married,  Gone in 60 Seconds, National Treasure...just to name a few). I will go see any film that has Nicolas Cage in it.  I'll be honest though, I don't like all of his films. But I will go see them simply because he's in them, which merits my attention. If I love them, I buy the DVD's when they come out; if not, I skip them. But Nic always gets me in the theater from the get-go.

And there's something incredibly intense (and not entirely unattractive) about Nic's face.  He has very striking masculine features, which made him the perfect choice to be the subject of my very first celebrity painting in oils. And as far as I'm concerned, this first celebrity painting was my best.