[Malachi Maloney]

It's late. I'm exhausted. I've been working on this piece in secrecy for the last week, to the tune of like 10-14 hours a day. This piece is a painting I did for my girl as a Christmas present. We aren't spending much money on each other this Christmas because we're buying a new truck the first week of next month. So, that'll be our "BIG" present.
I still wanted to something really nice for her though. She's worked so hard this year supporting us, while I've chased my dream of becoming a professional artist. I was making BIG money last year and when I decided to leave my job as a chef and become this "artist" thing I am now......Needless to say it's set us back financially this year, a lot.
And through it all she's stood by me and supported me. Financially, spiritually, mentally........What I'm trying to say here, is that she has supported me in every possible way.
I won't go on any longer. But trust me people, she IS a perfect woman.
So,as I was saying........I wanted to something special for her this year.
Well, my girlfriend is like Playboy's BIGGEST fan. From the magazine, to the clothes, to the home accessories, everything. She knows more about Playboy's history then any man will ever know. (Not excluding Hef himself.) And she has always discussed the possibility of maybe submitting some photos to playboy someday. So, since she's been doing so much for me/us this year, I thought I would at least give her something to tied her over until she really has a chance to be in the magazine...............

I really think this might be my best work ever.
I think I've managed to add a lot more depth to this piece then you may have seen in some of my other resent attempts.

Hopefully after all this blabbering you still want to see the painting.
So, here goes..........
This is a FAKE playboy cover I painted with my fiancee as the cover girl. Christmas issue of course.

This is going to be made into a 20x28 inch poster. Original res is at 300ppi
Yes, most of those captions are made up. And I had to play around with the fonts to get 'em to look right. There still not "exact", but they're as close as I'm going to get.
Aside from the lettering, everything here was painted. No clippings were used. Even that little flag in the bottom corner and the holly on top of the P were painted by hand.

Here's the painting without any lettering.


And here's a detail shot.

I'm off to get it printed and framed....Then a long nap.


Let me know what you think.

Malachi

[EDIT: Changed the spelling of 'BRUNET' to 'BRUNETTE'.]

[ December 24, 2001: Message edited by: Malachi Maloney ]

[CyberArtist]

Lol, looks great. My biggest complaint (other than the background, which could use some blurring) is that her skin looks a little plastic. It's too monotone. Too perfectly smooth. It's like she's got no pores!

The hair is a little underdetailed as well.

Otherwise, it's stunning!

Also, the detail shot link has an extra "http://" in it, so it doesn't work.

[ December 23, 2001: Message edited by: CyberArtist ]

[Malachi Maloney]

Thanks for the comment.

The detail's url has been fixed.
Now you can see some hair detail.

M

[snarf]

Hey man, lookin' good. But before you print it, you might want to change "Brunet" to "Brunette"

So.. did she start as your 'model' and evolve into your fiance, or was she already before you started using her as your model?

[sacrelicious]

Hey Malachi, this is a great piece. I agree with the above crits, and I was also going to point out the "Brunet" thing but snarf beat me to it. My main gripe- you've done a great job of creating a sense of depth but it's also quite dark. There doesn't seem to be many highlights, just darks and midtones. I think adding a few judicious highlights would really make it pop. You could probably just up the brightness or contrast, even. But this is super overall and will make a great gift.

[Fallen]

Hey Malachai,

Nice work as usual...a little too dark for the skintones, just my personal taste though. The netting on the bra and underwear is extremely well done and the little playboy bunny on the bra too. It's those little touches that make a painting great.
Also, I dig the hands, you do them very convincingly.

[ValarianROOT]

Well I'm impressed, it looks great!!! Just had to say that. The only critiques I would have had are already posted. So, good job!!! Hope she likes it.

[Malachi Maloney]

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Yes, I did take it to the printers before I had realized that I misspelled "BRUNETTE". But that's ok, the dumb asses at Kinko's printed it even darker than the real image is. They made it so dark that the whole left half of her body is almost entirely black! gggggggrrrrrrrr.......

So, I have to take it back and get it reprinted anyway. I fixed the spelling of BRUNETTE as you can see and I'm also going to lighten the image just a tad to insure that the morons at Kinko's do a good job this time.
Since I can't fix the poster 'till after Christmas, I showed the botched poster to her and...........she loved it.

So, on to your replies.......

CyberArtist~ Thanks for the C&C. Much appreciated.

snarf~ Thanks for pointing out the spelling error. As for the modeling thing, we dated before she started modeling for me.

sacrelicious~ Thanks for the comments and critiques. I agree about the darkness factor. I wanted to add a sort of ambiance to the piece through the dim lighting. I was hoping that by making her a little on the dark side and making the background on the lighter side, that it would give the viewer and the subject/Amy's interaction with each other a more intimate quality.
I'm going to make it slightly lighter however, If for no other reason than to make the details "pop" out more in the printing.
Thanks again for the comments.

Fallen~ Thanks for the kind words bro. Nice to know you think my work's usually nice.
I agree with you that her skin's a little too dark. See above for more comments on that. I was surprised that you could even really see any of the netting detail in the bra and panties. A lot of those details are lost in the small jpg.'s that I put on the net. Oh well.
I'm glad you caught the bunny head. Had to keep with tradition and hide one in there.
[For anyone who doesn't know, Every Playboy magazine since the mid 60's (not sure the exact year) has had a bunny head hidden in the cover somewhere.]

ValarianROOT~ Thanks for the kind words.


Thanks again for the comments everyone.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Malachi

[NextGen]

hey great stuff... One thing I would do if I were you is put maybe a black line around the sentences that overlap her body.. like some of the greens get mixed up a little. EX. the "From the deserts of Arizona...."

Anyway, cool stuff and I never knew about that hidden Bunny in all PB covers...
/me pulls out collection to examine more closely... ^_^

[Robert Ashley]

DUDE!!! NEVER PRINT AT KINKOS!!!! This is the number one rule at my school as far as printing goes. Always take it to a professional printer. Kinkos is a place full of highschool drop outs that dont want to work at mcDonalds.

I would lighten her up a lot though. It would look a lot better if you made the background dark and her lighter, sense she is the main point of focus. At the moment my eye goes to the shapes around her rather than on her. IMHO

Great work though! Looks nice!

[ December 25, 2001: Message edited by: Robert Ashley ]