Kamaal the Abstract

I'm on break from Gage right now, and I haven't posted anything in a while. So here's some messing around I've been doing. I don't know much about painting or putting things together, color-wise, but here you go.

I was looking through the magazine rack at a Barnes & Noble in downtown Seattle and I saw a picture of Q-tip on the cover of some music magazine I hadn't heard of. So I picked it up. Q-tip was an MC in A Tribe Called Quest, whose first album I picked up the summer after my first year of college. I listened to it on the bus a lot, riding through Minneapolis. Great band, great records.

Q-tip released a couple of solo albums, and I heard a song off the last one driving around in LA -- I guess the album's supposed to be called "Abstractionisms" or "Kamaal the Abstract," but it was never actually released for sale. A bunch of promo copies went out to DJs, though, so the record's been floating around for a while. Killer album, sort of an arty '70's funk, with Q-tip as a band leader and songs that make you think of Roy Ayers and Miles Davis ("On the Corner" or thereabouts). I've been listening to it a lot while I've been drawing casts and nudes at Gage.

So, for the sake of memories and good music, I got to drawing from the photos of Q-tip from this magazine I picked up -- Filter? They're done with different inks and gouache and colored pencil and pastel, and even if they don't totally work (and even if Mr. Q-tip doesn't look so healthy when he's yellow), they look kinda interesting.