Figure Work with Rod Brayman

To balance out my last posting with the silly photos of me rolling around with stinky crawfish, I wanted to prove that I am a serious art model. Well, I'm not completely serious all the time as you may know by now, but when it comes to figure work, I'm serious about creating the highest quality work. I'm excited by the shapes humans can make with their bodies; the way limbs can extend and bend to create images that we don't see every day.

These photos are from a recent collaboration with Rod Brayman. I had seen some of his awesome work with fellow art models Liv and Vex Voir and knew I had to contact him about working together. He likes to work with dancers and my form may fool you into thinking I have dance background, but the closest I got to dance was having a high school roommate at an art's boarding school who was a dance major. 

We spent the day together with a team to assist with lighting, a MUA (Don Rokicki did a great job even if most of these photos don't showcase how he subtly enhanced my face) and one of his artist friends watching to learn about professional shoots. My body was officially exhausted after the end of the shoot but seeing these results, I know the sore muscles were well worthwhile.

All photos by Rod Brayman

Crawfish!!!!!

Crawfish!!!

I was introduced to crawfish in Louisiana on one of my first modeling trips in 2009, and not quite sure what I thought of being served a bucket full of bright red, dead lobsteresque “mud bugs” with a few boiled potatoes and corn, all to be eating by tearing into with your hands, red pepper and salt to seep into your fingers, beer to wash this all down with. I thought a side salad would have been appropriate, but that just isn’t part of the meal.

Self-portrait with lobster

Last year was my first home-cooking adventure. I, of course, wanted to play with the live critters, and carefully sought to do portraits with them. I didn’t know how quick they’d be to pinch me. This year, I wanted crawfish again. Yes, to eat, but mostly to shoot with. One grocery store only sold 35 pound bags, and that was waaay too many to shuck to eat now or later, but another place sold exactly the amount we wanted and I came home with 9 pound of these little pinching guys.

What do you do with your live food? Throw it on the floor, set up a tripod and take photos, right? Then recruit help to dump more on you while you are laying there.

I was distracted by the awesomeness of my live “props” and have to admit none of these photos turned out to be winning “art” but if you ever wanted to know what I look like laying on the floor with 9 pounds of stinky crawfish (I learned I should have washed them beforehand because yuck, the smell was horrendous), with the biggest laugh of childish joy on my face, then this is the set for you.

After shooting on the floor, played with them in a more civilized manner, one at a time, with iphone photos on a table. Then came for the cooking of them, and I still wanted a couple to walk around on the ground while cooking up the first batch, and demonstrated one awesome feature of living in Houston to my California sister and my nephew and niece via facetime.

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No crawfish should be eaten without a swig of beer, or a couple of bottles, so there was crawfish playtime, crawfish eat time, recuperate on couch time, coffee time, mop the kitchen floor time, then I was finally ready for the gym.

If you've missed reading about my antics, I'm back in full swing but taking my stories over to another site. 

Come join in my adventure at: The Artful Nomad's Self-Portraiture Project

I have dived into self-portraiture and would thank you for your support with copious photos, stories and a personal look into art created by me, with me. (I will also be sharing my photographs of my fellow nude model friends).

    

self-shot