John Muir ( April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wildeness in the United States.
 Finally settling in San Francisco, Muir immediately left for a week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Muir notes that "He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir

Today i want to share my last project dedicated to John Muir and the Yosemite Half  Dome mountain.

 

 You can watch the "making of" video as well.

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Portrait of Walt Whitman

   Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.

    This drawing was created for Sticky Leaves which is a new company based in the USA that's dedicated to helping people show off life passions and positive world views on high-quality, artistic t-shirts sold at a reasonable price. They're starting things off on Teespring and hope to expand to having their online store set up soon. This Walt Whitman design can be purchased on their latest shirt, which is available here: http://teespring.com/waltwhitman

Watch me creating this art on YouTube:

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Portrait of a Ukrainian Girl

This is not for the first time that I create portraits of Ukrainian women. Being a Ukrainian artist, I am sometimes contacted by people from abroad who ask me to draw gift portraits of their Ukrainians wives, girlfriends or acquaintances. You can see some examples of such portraits on this blog too. There is an artwork ordered by an Italian guy who wanted me to create a portrait of his Ukrainian wife as an elf princess and another portrait created for an American man’s girlfriend living in Ukraine. This time, when a guy from Moscow asked me to create a portrait of his friend from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, I thought why not to use this commission to show a little bit of Ukrainian culture to the world. So I made a video showing my work in progress and added a beautiful piece of Ukrainian music as a soundtrack to the video. And here are the results of my work. Hopefully, you will enjoy some Ukrainian spirit in this artwork.

Ukrainian girl portrait

Watch this video on Youtube

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Portrait of Young Michael Caine

I remember watching Michael Caine movies when I was very young. It may be that these souvenirs of youth made me want to draw a portrait of this well-known actor. Or may be I was charmed with the fact that Michael Caine will be 80 years old in 2013 and he still looks good and active.

Young Michael Caine wearing his signature hipster glasses

He still acts in many films. Michael Caine’s face looks rather attractive from artist’s perspective. Although he was born in a poor family, he has that peculiar British nobility in his appearance. Michael has a beautiful family and despite his solid age he even mastered Twitter. This active gentleman seems to have that irresistible aura that has inspired me to draw his portrait. So I found a picture of young Michael Caine that had been taken a year before my birthday and I used it as a reference for the portrait. Furthermore, this picture shows Michael wearing his famous hipster glasses; therefore I wanted to include this cool accessory into the portrait. I also learned from the Internet that one of Michael Caine’s favorite songs was “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. That’s why I decided that this great piece of music should be the soundtrack for my video showing the portrait creation process. I believe this song indeed perfectly fits a mature man who lived a long life of success. I hope Michael Caine himself will find this portrait and share his thoughts about it in the comment section below (well, I know it sounds almost impossible, but it doesn't hurt to dream).

Watch this video on Youtube

P.S. many people ask me what kind of pen I use for my artworks. For this portrait of Michael Caine I utilized one of my most appreciated drawing tools – a Pilot Birdie fountain pen.

Related posts:
John Wayne
Steven Spielberg
Hank Williams, Jr.
Johnny Cash
Michael Connelly

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