I was beginning to feel a bit “scribble dependent” so… I decided to put on some BeBop and start something that was scribble free. It’s still an automatic drawing in that I really had no intent when I first picked up my pencil and just let the image develop as I went along. The drawing isn’t quite finished but I’m going to try to leave this a little bit loose and not fill in every inch of the canvas.
I decided that I was going to wait until this was finished to post about it again.
For now… it’s finished. It could stand a little cleanup but I’m going to wait until it’s cured for a bit before I do that. For one thing, it’s a bit easier… for another… I’m at the point where every time I look at this thing I see something else that needs to be “fixed”. I need to leave it alone for a while. 🙂
This is scheduled for a show I have coming up in March. I’ve got plenty of time to pull it off of the wall and completely re-work it. 🙂
Strangely enough for me… I wasted the entire day trying to update my gallery resume… looking up exhibition dates that I didn’t actually bother to record and so on. So… this is a painting from a while back… when I made the switch back from digital to traditional media. I used acrylics for the first year or so then switched back to oils. This is one of the acrylic pieces.
I called it “A Continental Breakfast” because of the cinnamon rolls.
It finally “clicked”. 🙂 That’s technical, artsy talk for “the forms all work, everything fits, the composition is fairly tight and the motion flows unimpeded across the face of the image.” Nearly time to stop, in other words.
I realized this afternoon that this painting channels, pretty well, the psychedelic, stoner music that I’ve been listening to for the entire time I’ve been working on it. I did listen to Renaissance for most of this last session. 🙂 I suppose that’s appropriate for refining things. It will still probably take another session or two.
I have a cold. I had a cold yesterday. ….and on Monday. Not a horrible cold. It’s about a 6 on the Kleenex per hour scale.
Monday, I spent an hour or so working on Rocking Horse Dream then decided that I needed to do something that required, um… no physical exertion.
So, I got out Drippy. I spent a while on this Monday and Tuesday morning and got it to the point that you see it in the first image. Personally, I don’t like it at all. I thought it looked better in the monotone stage.
This is after an Indian yellow glaze made with lots of water and a bit of gloss medium. I wanted it to pool in places. I added (too much) salt to it to sort of kill the brushstrokes and add some texture to the paper. Once this was dry, I scraped off some of the salt and gave it a coat of clear medium. I like this even less than the first thing.
This is from today. I scraped off more of the salt and cleaned things up a bit, did a glaze of Phthalocyanine Blue, let that dry somewhat then scumbled across that with Titanium White… twice. I’m still not all that thrilled with it but I can see a bit of potential. I actually like what’s happening in a few places. I suppose the next step is to repaint a few of the areas. It should go a little bit easier seeing that many of the edges are already defined. It’s fairly easy to stay inside the lines when the edges are in relief. I’ll repaint them anyway.
I’m somewhere in the middle of the “stand back and stare at the thing, work on something, wipe it off and re-do it, stand back and tell yourself it works then re-do it again phase.
I’m happy with the way things are going… I do wish they would go a little faster.
Strangely, I’ve felt a real need to listen to psychedelic stoner stuff for the entire time I’ve worked on this.
Looks like my previous estimates were a little overly optimistic. Still… this is fun and is turning out pretty well. I’ve spent a lot of time just playing with stuff and seeing what I can do with it.
I did spend some time yesterday trying not to scream in frustration at that bottom, center area but I’m pretty sure I can get it to work. It does look a lot better in this shot than it seems to in real life.
By the way… I’m now massively impressed with what my Epson printer is capable of. The colors on these are just plain gorgeous. Guess I’m going to have to come up with the cash for their new large format model.
I’m actually seeing the finish line on this one. A few more sessions and I’ll let it dry for a bit then brush in the highlights. Many bits of this are finished, again… aside from fitting them into the rest of the painting.
I got back to this today. It’s hard to forget about. It sort of fills the studio. I think the forms are pretty much resolved. It’s a matter of colors and shading and molding and modeling from here on out. It is going to get a lot brighter. 🙂 Hopefully, that will make it easier to photograph.
Colors are the same. Oils stay usable on the palette for a long time.
Studio Time 