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THECEEFLAT, a place of inspiration.. from Peter Bragino on Vimeo.

This inspirational video covers interviews with New York artists Peter Bragino and Kevin Corcoran, thoughts on building Theceeflat Gallery in Brooklyn, footage from the Gilgo beach mural project, the opening of the Cb, and Friday night figure drawing at the Cb gallery. Filmed by John Bragino and RJ Weyant. Produced and edited by John Bragino.

I've been given the opportunity to design, and direct the following project. The image above is the comp for the mural and it is a little hard to see but this is just a teaser. The mural is a 10' high x 240' two sided tunnel. That's 120' per side. It will be completed in under a week and will be finished by Labor day this year, 2010. The entire project is going to be filmed by John Bragino and a documentary will be produced so stay tuned…….

Project Mission Statement:
Create a mural utilizing volunteerism and creativity to bring the community together and create a source of pride and beauty at West Gilgo. Change the underpass area from its current state (wasted space, eye sore, drain on the community) to a source of culture, creativity, & community involvement.

Design statement:
As you enter the tunnel and walk down the right side youll notice the LEFT WALL which is side one of the mural and intended to be viewed first. Winter is breaking and birds are beginning to reappear on the trees. As the scene progresses spring comes into full view with fish swimming towards the ocean.
As they approach summertime they gather in celebration. Swimming fish become tribal in nature flattening out on the wall and becoming grafitti like in
design. As side one ends the fish begin to morph back and swim upward high into the water getting smaller as they approach the sky. By the time they
reach side two theyre swimming low again amidst a coral reef. THE RIGHT wall shows fall emerging into an abstract configuration of mermaid like
forms that meet head to head with the birds fleeing the impending winter heading towards warmer and greener pastures. As fall turns into winter and the
experience of the seasons comes to a close your met with an archway of twisted trees on the ceiling and a lone bird pointing your way back home.

Participating artists:
Peter Bragino
John Bragino
Kevin Corcoran
Lisa Distefano
Christine Kane
Jeff Slack
Jennifer Quinn
Sonia Vera-Leon

Here's 4 image from a one night session with Adrienne, aka "Apathy Angel". Adreinne is an amazing model and a Burlesque performer. The thing that sticks out to me about this series of drawings is the consistency of image. To me that means that she looks like the same person in each drawing which is something I've been working hard to do, make each model look like themselves. It's easier said than done but in this instance I feel like I've done a good job of keeping her looking like herself and I'm proud of myself for that.

I'd like to thank the lovely model Sara for this pose. Sometimes a pose feels more authentic than other times. In this particular instance the pose had weight, mood, and a presence that helped drive my image making. I felt as if I was witnessing a private moment in this woman's life that was weighted with thought and reflection. I really love the way this turned out…

Just spent 7 days camping in the Allegheny National Forrest at the 2010 National Rainbow Gathering and was able to make this jewelry headpiece with all natural materials that were gathered from the floor of the Forrest.

Even the green "string" seen on the side here was found in the forrest. You'll notice that different materials have different tensile strength and can be used to tie things together, you just have to hunt around for them….

Princess of the Forrest Gillian..

Here's my newest blog design. This is the 6th or so different website configuration that I've had since I first got a website back in 1998. There's actually been about 4 or 5 more designs but most of them, although they were complete working websites, never made it to the web or were only up for a few months. For arguments sake I offer Version 6. It's basically a very simple and clean design. I hope this makes your time on my site more enjoyable….

Just to illustrate the way my mind thinks I offer this. As an artist I'm in continual search of understanding about form, scale, invention, imagination, and color. Sometimes I see something and I can imagine it as something else as we've all done from time to time. I was recently upstate and while driving I noticed this enormous cloud and immediately saw the mothership from District 9. Well it wasn't actually the same shape but the scale of it just screamed alien invasion. So here's what I painted in photoshop and below is the original photograph that I took which sparked the idea. It's more of an exercise in color. How to paint in a ship that appears to be in the actual scene. I think I did a pretty decent job for a 30 minute sketch. With more time and some attention to detail this ship might just abduct someone….

The Mother Ship

Original photo

Using the Sketchpad on my blog I created this.

I was explaining to a friend the use of contrast or lack thereof to depict distance in a landscape image so today I decided to draw this image and play with the concepts myself. There is also the theory of warm colors vs cool colors in being able to show distance…Distance is shown here by creating less detail in the distance or (background) of this image. The colors used in the background are also cooler colors as compared to the middle ground (really warm and colorful stuff). Then the foreground is established by using lots of detail and the darkest color (black). Usually only the foreground will have high contrast or the use of black/ darker colors in relation to really light colors. These are all things that can be observed naturally outdoors. I am using the concepts and creating my own colors/ arrangement of colors to illustrate this. It's a game of sorts. Take a concept and try it out. That's what I've done here….

Upon the roof of my gallery there's a huge wall that was looking too bare and just needed a little love. Armed with some house paint and an assortment of spray cans we decided to make something more eye pleasing on the wall. This mural, like most collaborative work I've done with Kevin, was an improvisational effort. We had a few things in mind to guide us. We wanted it to have warm tones and feel a little bit dated as if it had been there for a while. We achieved this feeling with the colors that we used. Usually subject matter and color are two good ways to keep you on track when your creating something in an improvisational manner. Here's the sequence of images on how this mural came to be…..

Well it's about time I customized something for me and my brand new Converse Chuck Taylor's were the perfect place to start..I won't bore you with too many words but I do want to tell you how I did them. Real quick. I drew the designs with a regular Sharpie marker, then I airbrushed the colors around the designs. That's it. Pretty simple…..