Oscar

This portrait is incredibly dear to me! It was yet another venture into a new style of art that I had never before explored. I had to skip many many naps to bring this piece to fruition, but it was SO worth it.

Oscar was created using Chuck Close’s grid system that he developed as an evolution from Pointillism (the art with all the tiny dots), and it is also as large as a typical Chuck Close piece!!! That’s REALLY big. I mean, REALLY big. Whatever you are imagining — double it. Then double it again. Seriously.

Chuck Close recently passed over the rainbow bridge, so this is both a tribute to his contribution to the art world as well as a way to honor my good fren, Oscar the whippet, who is deserving of all the portraits in the world.

You can see the final portrait below followed by the dissection of how it was made. Yes!! I am peeling back the layers to my art magic for you — it’s very exciting, I know.

Chuck Close was all about The Process, so here is what I did to create this masterpiece:

I first divided my canvas into 360 squares that make up an epic grid system. Then, I developed a color palette of 81 colors that work together to create different colors when viewed together from afar. This was the hardest part since I am colorblind and mainly work in black and white. Next, I slowly filled in the individual squares one at a time going layer by layer to build up the portrait, which ended up having a total of 6 distinctive layers.

By printing all 6 layers on top of one another in the correct order, you get the finished portrait as designed, BUT over 40 portrait variations can be created by printing different layer combinations. Nifty, huh?!? I included some of my favorite layer combinations below!! I hope you enjoy them!!