Player Portrait by Flitworth
January 11th, 2008 10:24 PM
Brushwork using only black ink is found in China, Japan, and Korea. I chose to use this medium as a nod to my East Asian home.
I realize I get a bit nerd-tastic in my write-ups but I am obsessed with context so please forgive me. As always, there is some additional information attached to the photos.
According to a documentary stored in my head for the purpose of being remembered right here and now, in China artists who studied painting endured long, regimented apprenticeships. For ages they wouldn't even be allowed to draw living things, stuck with endless pine forests and bamboo sprouts. Drawing faces is quite a challenge for me under the best of circumstances but with a single brush I decided to honor this and not display the living parts of players. Those few that are based on figure photographs therefore do not feature the human but the trappings of the figure.
Initially, I poked amongst the high-ranked players on the list and looked at those players I was most familiar with. It occurs to me, though, that I don't dedicate enough time to expanding my circle of known players or engaging new players. I looked through every player listed starting on the last page, #65 (as of 1/12/08). The final player listed was clearly a gift to me given the photograph. There are so many players that I have never seen on the Praxis! A sea of potential greatness. I will be contacting those that I painted but who have been otherwise absent in the hopes that it will encourage them to be active in the new era.
Those painted:
Caren
Jonny
reima
FZ!
Magpie
Lincoln
Darkaardvark
The Revolutionary
The Villain
I ran out of paper (mistakes have been made)! Hardly an excuse not to keep going but I did what I set out to do for this task.
Caren
Caren's player photograph caught my attention because it looks almost exactly like a photo I took of a fountain in Sydney, Australia. It has beautiful concentric circles.
Former Enemy
The Villain still captures my imagination because there was such a lot of activity on SF0 surrounding him but it was before my time. Rifling through much older completions is sometimes like reading a story compilation.
Behold!
They are all up on (or near, the fridge isn't that big) my fridge, which can operate as a full-time holder of all things art-related as it no longer holds food.
Sumokhwa
According to Wikipedia this is the Korean name for something similar to sumi-e, the Japanese version of black ink work that I'm vaguely familiar with.
22 vote(s)

rongo rongo
5
susy derkins
5
Lincøln
5
JTony Loves Brains
5
JJason Recognition
5
Jellybean of Thark
5
Magpie
5
High Countess Emily
5
Spidere
5
Meta tron
5
Lank
5
anna one
5
Augustus deCorbeau
5
none
5
Charlie Fish
5
Darkaardvark
5
teucer
5
Shea Wolfe
5
Thain Stormbringer
5
H L
5
Ben Whitehouse
5
Not Here No More
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So brilliant. Wonderful. A new refreshing take on the task and so beautiful. And I am honored to have been painted (again).
have always been one of my
most favorite things
Yay, I must go back to my helmet pic. Thanks Flitworth.
Ink painting is so interesting because there's no going back and erasing or retouching.
This is so awesome... so simple and clean.
I have no idea how this one fell through the cracks but I swear I didn't see it before now.











The context and the many layers, Flitworth your tasks breathe...
Sensei, domo arigato Gozaimashite