I am happy to announce that LVA (Louisville Visual Art) wrote a nice article about some of my work.

​http://www.louisvillevisualart.org/artebella/2017/1/24/vignette-nikita-krivosheyhttp://www.louisvillevisualart.org/artebella/2017/1/24/vignette-nikita-krivoshey

Oils and Acrylics are both awesome painting mediums depending on what kind of a project you are doing and in what conditions. Bellow is a table showing the qualities of both paints which may help you choose which is the right medium for you to work with. Oils are oil soluble and dry slowly where as Acrylics are water soluble are dry quickly. Oils are better for blending because of the viscosity of the oil medium. Viscosity determines how quickly the paint sets, remains moist and workable. Acrylic paints tend to set much quicker and mixing is better done on the palette than on the surface. If you are a beginner painter usually a teacher will recommend you get started with Acrylics because there are less technicalities to it and it is cleaner.  However if you live in a hot or dry area such as Arizona and you want to paint outside, then I would strongly recommend trying oil paints. Acrylics tend to dry so quickly in hot and dry conditions that they become very difficult to work with. One benefit of oil paints is that you can work on a painting for days without the surface becoming dry, this allows you to mix the paints on the surface, and blend nicely, creating smooth transitions. With Acrylics on the other hand this is almost impossible, on the other hand if you want your painting to be handled soon after, then acrylic is better. One of my favorite acrylic sets is the Blickrylic student sets. They are cheap, have good pigment, mixability, and opaqueness. Only downside is the lack of color options. 

For the mural painting at the bottom of this post, I used all acrylic paint. It was a good choice because at the size of 7' x 7', I saved a lot of money by choosing acrylics over oils. Another reason I used acrylics is because of my style of painting which is unplanned, often requires lots of changes and repainting of certain areas. Because Acrylic dries quickly I could completely paint over an area without making a mess by having the paints mix. Also by thinning down the upper most layer I could achieve a nice semistransparent effect in some areas giving nice depth of color. With oil I would have to wait longer until the bottom layer dried. The downside, was that if I ever wanted to blend a new color with a layer beneath, I would have to either thin down the paint significantly, or remix the color below again.   

A few weeks ago I conducted a seminar art class with Senior citizens at Access Care in Louisville, KY. After explaining the concept of collaborative art, two tables were set up with three sheets of paper. One group of grandmas and grandpas quickly proceed to put as much on the sheet of paper as possible, it was nice to see how enthusiastic they were, but after about 30 minutes their patience ran out and only a few people would come and go to add to the piece. 

Another sheet of paper was attended to by another group of seniors who needed more motivation and assistance. This was the group that was willing to try out drawing something but did not feel confident about the choices they made. The third sheet of paper was started by a gentleman who used to be an architect and has an artistic background. Most other members of the class refused to contribute there as they were afraid to ruin his work. Overall, the event was a success because it was fun. What I learned from this was that if the project is limited by a short time frame it is better to have a much smaller paper size, this way the participants will cover more space on the page.

Last week I spent painting a mural for Xclusive Professional Auto Detailing in Louisville. The owner of Xclusive called me and asked if I could paint a mural on the wall of what was to be a future showroom for cars. I made a couple sketches, looked over some photos and eventually we agreed on a design and I started the painting. This was by far the largest painting I had ever done roughly 16' x 24'. 

When standing next to the wall it was impossible to make a straight line because I couldn't see what I was doing at that scale. So I ended up using a projector which I had purchased for this purpose. I projected Photoshop onto the wall and then drew on my tablet computer while the projector superimposed that image in the blank wall. Next I went and outlined my drawing on the wall using paint. After having the layout in place I proceeded to fill in the major areas of the painting with major colors which I would further adjust later when I went in with the details. One of the challenges of working at this scale was mixing colors. Even though I would mix plenty of paint for painting the sky, I would still run out and then it was difficult matching that same color. Further more mixing directly on the wall was- also not a very good method for the same reason. So I learned that the best method was to premix all the colors beforehand in large quantities and then go in with paint as if in a color by number fashion. The walls already had graffiti on them when I started the project so I had to incorporate the painting of the Louisville cityscape with the graffiti so I painted some splashes of paint around it. After all the major work- on the mural was finished I put the company logo in the sky with the use of a projector.

This page is dedicated to all the visitor to my site. Please write me any comments or questions you may have about my work, services, and processes. Here is will share with you what goes on in my mind when I do what I do. I hope to provide information into how the visual arts can be used in everyone's life to promote balance, harmony, and greater insight into the self. 

I am an artist, a meditator, a gamer, a speaker, a teacher, and now I am writer. I am also a thinker and psychic. A thinker because I think, and a psychic because I feel. I am a communicator. All my actions are communication. Look at my work and you will know what I think, and look at it some more and you will know what I felt while making it, the state of my mind. The art is a record. By examining my life I can see a reflection of my mind. And by examining my mind directly I see why life is the way it is. My mission in my artwork is to directly confront the viewer to develop mindfulness as catalyst for deep introspection.