Thursday, October 27, 2011

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Inspired by Artwork

Today's post is inspired by the artwork of Charles Batte, also known as Chas Batte. Chas worked for the San Francisco Opera for many years. Now he focuses on his art dolls and figures. These things are AMAZING! I have been lucky enough to meet Chas and I also bought one of his gorgeous little figures at an event called Halloween and Vine, a juried Halloween art show in Sonoma County. Here are the nails I painted inspired by Chas Batte:

It's a little devil dude! And my friend Nev pointed out that the swirls on the other nails are inspired by Robin Moses, another great artist. They sure are! Robin is the guru of nail art. Check her out on YouTube.

Here is the piece that inspired this manicure. It is a magic potion bottle with a removable head! 

I started with a base coat of butter LONDON Knees Up. I lurve this color! This is one coat, and I could have done two coats, but I was too tired to do two. 

I did the outline of the devil first with black acrylic paint. I was worried that this would be harder to do since my model for the art was a sculpture, not a print. I really had to think about shape and shading more than usual. 

Then I added the red and white with more acrylic paint. Letting the paint kind of dry out on my brush made it easier to do the textured finish on his cloak/jacket. 

Here is a closeup of the face. Those eyeballs were a bitch to do. I had to do the left eye about 4 times to get it right. The acrylic paint lets you do that kind of thing. Polish is way less forgiving of mistakes. 

Here is the full mani topcoated. It is pretty cute! I mean EVIL. 

Here is me holding my magic potion bottle. I love this little guy. It is so cool to own a piece of Chas Batte's artwork! Support artists! Buy their work!

Here is the little devil without his head. You put the magic potion inside his little body and his neck fits nicely back into his collar. (Of course, this is too precious to me to fill with ACTUAL magic potion, so I just pretend.)

Polishes used in this manicure: Cult Nails Get It On basecoat, butter LONDON Knees Up, and Seche Vite topcoat. 

Check out Chas Batte! He's incredible! Check out Robin Moses, she is incredible too! 

Tomorrow: Nails inspired by a Flag. :-)

13 comments:

  1. These are incredible! I went and looked up Charles Batte, and you did such a good job of capturing his style. I also love that the square spirals look kind of like one of Robin Moses' designs! It's like you were inspired by *two* artists!

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  2. Totally, Nev! I am updating this post soon to have Charles' website linked and you are so clever to notice the Robin Moses swirls. I totally did think of Robin when I did them.!! :)

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  3. this is super good!!! great job!!

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  4. I love your nail art, you are so talented!! what kind of tools do you use? I'd love to see a post showing what you use if you don't mind!

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  5. Thanks so much Alyssa! I do my art in a style that is very similar to Robin Moses. She has 400+ videos on YouTube, including a great FAQ section on nail art brushes, paint, and other techniques. After this challenge I will do a post about my tools, but in the mean time, check out Robin. She's amazing.

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  6. Oh wow! This is awesome!

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