Intense

 

I don't know if the face in this painting is due to the fact that people have really good facial recognition software in their brains, or if I'm picking up more then I think I am at the various life and portrait drawing sessions. Because I wasn't planning on creating a portrait of any kind.  There wasn't much of a plan involved in this painting, but since he appeared, and he looks pretty intense, that's what I called the painting.  

I'm assuming others see the face in this painting too, I've taken a very scientific poll, and 2 out of 2 people can see it!  I love the way he disappears the closer you get. 

  

I fought with this painting a lot.  I've made some paper and cloth mache creatures before, inspired by stumbling on a book by Dan Reeder.  I made simple monsters he calls Screamers; he takes it to a whole new level with dragons and all sorts of wonderful creatures.  Anyway, I wanted to create a bumpy 3D surface covered in cloth to paint on, instead of using a flat canvas.  

  

But once I created the surface, I didn't know what to do!!  I painted it black (which I seem to be doing a lot of lately), and just on it's own it looked gothic and creepy.   I quickly discovered that thick paint was the only way to go since the surface was so rough (yipee, I like lots of paint!), at which point I put on multiple layers until I sorta thought it was done.  Then I let it sit where I could see it.  Let it grow on me.  Soon the face appeared, and now I'm really liking it.  He's a little angry, but it's a nice strong image. 

Here are some pictures of little canvases I was playing with.  I'll probably paint over these, but you'll see what the cloth mache can look like.  

 

This is just cloth added to the canvas.  It looks kinda leathery (which makes it great for making those monsters), and the texture is great.  

Then I added some bumps underneath.  I probably overdid it on this one, it sticks out a bit too far, but it looked like some poor creature is trying to pull itself out of the primordial ooze, so I added a face. 

 

 Ok, and since that's too creepy to end a post on, here's a side view of Intense, so you can see how un-flat I made the canvas.  

Have a great week!

Suspend

 

Here is one of the random words for this month.  I probably could have pushed passed the initial image I had of the moon suspended in the sky, but I like the moon, so I went with it.  Unfortunately not all the background colours come out in the picture, so it looks a little flat here.  

I didn't just want the moon to be passively hanging in the air, I wanted it to have energy and movement. Have you ever seen birds effortlessly soaring in the sky, or someone doing acrobatics on a tightrope?  If you ever get a close up view, you see how much work and attention is needed to look so effortless.  They are constantly making minor adjustment to keep everything just so.  And that's what I wanted to convey here, I realize the moon isn't constantly adjusting its muscles to keep a stable orbit around the earth, but that's why this is art.  I can do what I want! 

And what if the moon did have to work to stay in orbit?  And what if it decided it wasn't worth the effort anymore, or it got distracted?  Would it fling off into space?  or plunge to earth?  What would happen to the earth if there were no tides?  Ok, this is getting far too deep for a Sunday morning.  But who knew... all this from one innocent word! 

Happy Valentines Day!

Okay, I couldn’t resist posting something for Valentines Day.  Nothing fancy, I whipped these up last weekend when I realized the timing of the start-up of the blog. 

As you can see I had some extra phthalo blue kicking around

And I think my inner 80's child came out in this one... This one reminds me of some big hot-pink heart earnings I used to have.  (were any earnings in the 80's small??)

Grand Opening!!!

Welcome to my weekly-ish painting blog!

I called this one Winter Exuberance, because I figured some colour would counteract the winter blahs. So I had some fun playing with line and colour; and I think it did the trick. Here's a close up...

A while ago I came up with the idea of using a random word generator to help with ideas (hey, writers use them, so I figured why not painters!).  The plan is to get a handful of words every month or so, and see what direction they send me in.  And I’m sure I’ll post other random creations here too. 

I found an awesome random word generator at Coyote Cult

So, let’s see, for this month I’ve got

1. skyrocket
2. won't
3. cud
4. suspend
5. protract

Hmm, maybe I can do something with those.