Beet Gallery http://beetgallery.com/ is doing a call for artists that I want to try to get into. Actually, I want to submit my work to the gallery regardless of whether I aim for that particular show or not, because the gallery is awesome and I think my work would go well there.

The show is a textile show with the theme "Pocket". Thus, inspiration for making a marsupial like humanoid woman with babies in a pouch. I just thought it would be fun if she had 4 boobs and 3 fingers, and incredibly large feet.... we will see how she actually comes out.

Slug

One of my favorite ideas can be found in a previous post. A woman in a fine black gown in a dark room against a wall with a slug crawling up her arm. There is a feeling of being trapped, almost like the mythical princess in the tower. On the right, I want to add some kind of beautiful vista. On the left a dusty light floating through a window. The wall itself will be painted with a cross section, sort of like an x-ray, so you see into it as if you are inside it. Perhaps there will be mice in the walls. Will there be other additions of symbolism perhaps? We shall see. The starkness and simplicity might be best for it.

The painting is sort of painted on the golden rectangle, although it's a little off now. I might undertake the huge task of painting over it and completely moving the figure over an inch to make it more like that, but I think I will more likely just change the positioning of the wall. So the balance will be not quite as unnerving and disconcerting as I had hoped, but I hope there is enough imbalance to be deliberately effective.

Done!

Here it is, the final layer. Still no digital camera. You can see where the computer screen of my laptop glared onto the body. So the subtleties of detail in that area are washed out by a blue light. That light isn't painted into the painting.

Almost done! The second pic sucks. I'm off to buy a camera today so this stops happening. Can you spot the fly? It's nice to have the composition together, with all the elements and stuff I wanted to put in for meaning. It isn't just a figure anymore, but a painting with (questionable) meaning. No I don't know exactly what it means. That would be too didactic. But I will probably make something up for a statement....

It's hard to see the detail of the necklace in the pic. I think if I show it in a gallery I will show the necklace too, maybe in a shadowbox or something. (If I just hang it on the wall someone might steal it.) If you didn't know from earlier posts, the necklace is made from screws, nuts, washers, bolts and a razor blade, all braided into a string. I wish I could show what a wonderful sound it makes when one wears it. It's lovely coming from something so... industrial. It kind of extends the intention of the whole series... beauty and utilitarian and disposable objects, things that aren't commonly understood as beautiful painted in a way that is. (Cardboard boxes were the first, garbage bags, now flies, slugs, crows, decaying walls, fences, power poles.... I shouldn't give it ALL away, I'll spoil the surprise!)

Yet another layer.

I was feeling a little discouraged. The last layer of the nuts and bolts painting was not so great. You can't tell by the terrible photo, but it looks a LOT better, I would say the figure is good enough that I can finish the rest of the painting.

Sorry, I really need a better camera then the one in my computer. Hopefully next month, if I don't spend all my money fixing my car.

Another layer, painting flesh, and an sketch I dug up

I like this sketch. I probably have around 5 or 6 active sketchbooks. It took me years to overcome the odd feeling of drawing in a sketchbook I had put down for a long time and then picking it up again and drawing in it again. The feeling of having a drawing that was from, say 2007 next to a drawing that was done in 2009. But I decided, a: it is wasteful to do that because I only fill them about halfway before they get buried in the clutter somewhere, and b: it's actually kinda cool to see things next to each other and how they evolved. Well, I don't know how old this sketch is. Maybe 6 months? I kinda like it. It might become a painting, I don't know.

The painting is coming along, but I really need to put it aside for awhile. I think I obsessed over it, and overworked it. It's a matter of figuring out just what technique to use to paint the skin, and since I don't have a model, making the figure look somewhat believable and interesting, not just awkward. Flesh is notoriously difficult to paint, and the medium I mix with my paint is particularly difficult to work with as it gets sticky. Did I mention it before? It's called Venice Turpentine, and it's really just sap. It comes in a jar and appears to be the color and consistency of honey, but it kind of thickens really fast, so I mix linseed oil and turpentine with it. It still gets sticky. It's a glazing medium. What it does is suspend the particles of color in the clear goo so light goes past them, and comes bouncing back. That kind of glazing is why so many old masters paintings have that "glow".

Now, I don't have a teacher to teach me how to use this stuff, so I have been trying to just experiment with it. So far I have had some beautiful results, but it takes so long. I think eventually I will have a method that I can keep using and it won't be so hard just to finish one painting. Unlike drawing, which is so automatic to me I don;'t even think about technique much, even when I experiment. Sorry the image is bad, I still don't have a digital camera. Anyone want to trade me one for a painting??? I need a fairly good one, it can be used, just decent. My old one had poor image quality. Ooh... my co-worker wants to buy my "God Cart" painting, (http://willowdarcy.deviantart.com/art/God-Cart-98620070) maybe she has a camera she can trade...

Which makes me also wonder if I shouldn't just frame and show a series of pen drawings. There is sometimes nothing more satisfying than drawing with a plain bic ballpoint pen. Actually I'm not picky about brand, I just have a bunch of bics lying around.

I hope I can get some of my art career off the ground. I might have to buy a new car, as the one I just bought seems to have more problems than are worth fixing. Not sure, I might fix it, I might trade it in for something else.... I don't know. If I had a couple thousand dollars I could sell it and get something decent.

Nuts and bolts 2

Second layer of paint. She looks a bit too warm and maybe a bit to tan for my liking. But more paint can always be added. The sun needs to be adjusted. The big white ring around it doesn't look right at all.

I finally am prepared to start another painting...
Doesn't look like much in this form. This is just a line drawing I traced and printed out. The drawing I did was much smaller than it needed to be, so I traced the outlines, scanned and printed larger. I don't know what hairstyle she will have yet. In the drawing she has it down, long and curly. In the original sketches it was up.