Studio Time

This sad, little guy is named “Ditty”. In 2012, when Ditty was born, he was a proud, colorful, little painting with his entire life and a bright, happy future ahead of him.

This was before Ditty came down with “Sharpie”.

The ravages of Ditty’s disease are pretty obvious. Those black marks weren’t in the painting when I finished it. By the time this came back from it’s first show, they’d already started to bleed up from the sketch. Thankfully, it didn’t sell.

Most everything I do involves some degree of experimentation. This one seemed like a no brainer… lay the thing out with a permanent marker, build the actual painting and just finish it up. Not even an experiment really. This is one of the few times I’ve not been able to salvage something. I don’t even want to try to paint over what’s there. I’m pretty sure I’ll just end up with the same results.

People ask on social media whether Sharpies are appropriate for fine art. My comment is usually something like “no… they bleed”. This is what that means.

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Ditty is so named because it’s supposed to represent a short snippet of a song. I usually view my work as something analogous to experimental jazz… where musicians take a phrase and expand on it. It’s all improvisation though I don’t really do things in real time. This was just a simple phrase.

The colors here are sap green blended with Naples yellow and cadmium yellow deep shaded with burnt sienna and highlighted with Naples yellow.

Anyway… this one failed.