Lesson #18 – Guest Mojo Maker from the Road

Artistic friends are a hoot. Meet Sean Murphy. Sean is an extraordinary photographer who I’ve known for many years. We worked together in a radical bar in San Francisco, CA 25 years ago. We were both dedicated to our craft, and we’ve stayed true to it in our own wild ways. He was there when the Rolling Stones FingerSmeared® with me and his images of that event are wonderful. As we prepare to auction off “Rock and Roll Voodoo” to benefit the renovation of the Lambertville Strand Theater, they will prove to be invaluable. Sean invited me to join him on his pod cast to chat about some of those wild times. I had not seen Sean in almost 25 years, but it felt like yesterday. He was still the same kookie character, unafraid to be completely authentic. The only dramatic change is that he’s been sober for the past decade, giving all of us the delightful opportunity to still have him in this world. His podcast “Stories from the Vault” is riddled with curse words and tales of inebriation and drug use – so be forewarned. Here’s a link to our chat if you want to hear it.

I invited Sean, his wife Raphye, and his podcast producers to play in some paint. I wanted to create this fun exercise to show you that if your value structure is strong, you can really play around with the color. Sean sent me an old photograph of Raphye and I broke the image down into 4 values. I color coded the areas so my painters could stay in their sections. I created four plates of acrylic paint, each filled with colors of the same value. A plate of lights, a plate of darks, a plate of medium darks, and a plate of medium lights. They each took a plate and added the colors to the corresponding value area. Mid-way through, they traded plates so they could be a part of the entire canvas. Once the areas were full, I pulled it together with a couple of strokes and voila – Rayphe the Goddess was born. You can try this with your friends and family. If you don’t have non-toxic acrylic paints, don’t use your fingers. You can mix up some oils and use brushes, or colored pencils, or markers – just separate your values and have at it!

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