Today I am honoring one of my favorite filmmakers, designers, artists and all around awesome man Tim Burton.  It was a refreshing turn from the abstract expressionist paintings that I’ve been doing the past couple weeks.  Let’s celebrate Tim Burton!

Timothy Walter “Tim” Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American film director, producer, artist, writer, poet and stop motion artist. He is known for his dark, gothic, macabre and quirky horror and fantasy films such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, and forblockbusters such as Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Batman, its first sequel Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factoryand Alice in Wonderland.

Burton is known for using recurring collaborators on his works; among them are Johnny

Depp, who has become a close friend of Burton since their first film together; musician Danny Elfman, who has composed scores for all but two of the films Burton has directed; and actress — as well as his domestic partner — Helena Bonham Carter. He also wrote and illustrated the poetry book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, published in 1997, and a compilation of his drawings, sketches and other artwork, entitled The Art of Tim Burton, was released in 2009.

Burton has directed 16 films and produced 12 as of 2012. He is currently working on Big Eyes, a biographical drama film about Walter Keane and his wife Margaret.

Burton was born in 1958, in the city of Burbank, California, to Jean Burton (née Erickson), the owner of a cat-themed gift shop, and Bill Burton, a former minor league baseball player who would later work for the Burbank Park and Recreation Department.  As a preteen, Burton would make short films in his backyard on Evergreen Street using crude stop motion animation techniques or shoot them on 8 mm film without sound (one of his oldest known juvenile films is The Island of Doctor Agor, that he made when he was 13 years old). Burton studied at Burbank High School, but he was not a particularly good student. He was a very introspective person, and found his pleasure in painting, drawing and watching films. His future work would be heavily influenced by the works of such childhood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl.

After graduating from Burbank High School with Jeff Riekenberg, Burton attended the

California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, California, to study character animation.  As a student in CalArts, Burton made the shorts “Stalk of the Celery Monster” and “King and Octopus”. He graduated in 1979.

Burton was married to Lena Gieseke, a German-born artist, for two years, whom he left to live with model and actress Lisa Marie; she acted in the films he made during their relationship from 1992 to 2001, most notably in Ed Wood and Mars Attacks!. After leaving her, Burton developed a romantic relationship with English actress Helena Bonham Carter, whom he met while filmingPlanet of the Apes. Lisa Marie responded in 2005 by holding an auction of personal belongings that Burton had left behind, much to his dismay.

Burton and Bonham Carter have two children: a son, Billy Raymond, named after his and Bonham Carter’s fathers, born in 2003;

and a daughter, Nell, born in 2007. Close friend Johnny Depp is a godfather of both of Burton’s children. In Depp’s introduction to Burton on Burton, he writes, “What more can I say about him? He is a brother, a friend, my godson’s father. He is a unique and brave soul, someone that I would go to the ends of the earth for, and I know, full and well, he would do the same for me.”

Burton was the President of the Jury for the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival, held from May 12 to 24, 2010 in Cannes, France.

On March 15, 2010, Burton received the insignia of Chevalier of Arts and Letters from then-Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand.

Burton has stated that his favorite films are Dracula A.D. 1972, The Wicker Man, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The War of the Gargantuas and The Omega Man.

From November 22, 2009 to April 26, 2010, Burton had a retrospective at the MoMA in New York with over 700 “drawings,

paintings, photographs, storyboards, moving-image works, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera,” including many from the filmmaker’s personal collection. The show also included his amateur and student films, music videos, commercials, and digital slide shows, as well as a complete set of features and shorts.

Read his extensive biography at wikipedia.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to draw/paint for Tim Burton’s tribute.  I decided to

do my own character in his style.

She had regular arms at first then I remembered my friend Mark Wilson telling me in the past to paint tentacle arms when in doubt so I decided to go that route!

Of course tentacles!  I hope you enjoy my tribute today…I sure had fun painting it!  I’ll see you tomorrow on day 64…after that 65 then it’s only 300 more to go.  Whew!  xoxo, Linda