Inky Fingers

Whew! I swear, I don't even want to know how many paint fumes I've inhaled while hunched over this canvas trying to coax thick gobs of black paint into those awkward channels. But when I step back, I'm happy to see that everything is looking good. The unfinished 'card' center still gives the painting an unpleasant muddled look, almost as though the painting is being seen from behind a smudged piece of glass. But it's an illusion. If you hold up your hand to block the view of the central figure, the painting suddenly looks very nice. Gotta love perception.

I'm going to have to fix those letters. They're true to the original, but I don't like them. I won't do any radical changes to the font, but somehow I have to make them look more cartoon like.

My hand moved slightly when I was doing the eye, so now it looks more sunken than I'd planned. I'm going to leave it alone. That effect wouldn't be my first choice, but it's small enough that I'm going to let it stay the way it is. After awhile, I've learned not to fight a painting too much. If it gets into its head that it wants to come out a certain way, I'd be foolish to try to fight it.

I don't think it's immediately obvious from the graphic, but the black is matte because the final protective gloss coating has yet to be applied. It looks like it was sketched in with chalk.

Not Taking The Easy Route

I'll make a quick comment about the pseudo-velvet paintings that I'm working on at the moment. They're easy. There, I said it.

Making shading and texture is an easy technique to do with acrylic paints and when you couple it with the fact that the results can be quite striking it's a trap to avoid in excess. Sure, you can crank out a painting quickly and admire the results for hours. But at the end of the day, you haven't really extended yourself as a painter. Not to say that those tricks don't have their place. They do. Heck, I'll admit to loving the results that I've achieved so far. But if I'm honest with myself I wouldn't consider them to be groundbreaking in any way, or ones that I've put honest toil into.

When I put it like that, they sound like artistic junk food. Quick, easy and satisfying in small quantities.

So for that reason, the next painting I'll be tackling after completing the four "Lucha" pieces will be on the order of difficulty a few magnitudes higher. It sort of scares me, but I'm looking forward to it. These paintings have been a quick vacation, but the one I have planned to follow will really push my limits. It's going to be based off of a cut-scene from the original "Witcher" game. Now that game was one that I couldn't make it all the way through. The graphics were fine, but tended to be a little jumpy even when I turned down all the detail from the option screen. Also, it was one of those linear games where you seem to have a lot of variety on how you want to pursue the storyline, but in reality you don't. To get from point A to point B you have to kill 20 monsters. No more, no less. The 20th monster is a boss that looks really difficult to kill but is actually impossible to fail at defeating. You know the type. Yes, I'm looking at you King's Bounty. You too, Dragon Age.

But I did get as far as an entertaining cut-scene where the main characters blur out into soft focus and a rather humorous painting drifts lazily across the screen. One screen capture later and I grabbed it for my collection of potential painting subjects. The Witcher might not be the best game to immortalize on canvas, but that one image sure is!

A Word About Wrinkles

Oh, the wrinkles are still on that painting below, make no mistake. The camera didn't capture them as well as it might have because the first layer of black wash doesn't show them as clearly as it might otherwise. But from where I'm sitting right now, glaring across the desk at the wrinkled canvas, they are extremely evident.

I swear I'm tempted to slap that canvas on the floor and take an iron to it.

Getting There

If there's one thing to learn from the above image, it's never to give up! Ha! The painting is coming along nicely, although I'd be hard pressed to say that it looks stunning in any way, shape or form. The central figure is getting fleshed out with liberal lashings of black. Unlike the previous Tiger painting, this one has many nooks and crannies that I didn't fully appreciate while sketching it onto the canvas. At the time I knew that I'd be working with the small brushes to delineate the scales of the dragon but the time the process would take was lost on me. I know MUCH better now.

Oh, do you notice the white heart in the upper left hand corner of the card? That is a mistake on my part. It should have the same washed out red as the queen's gown, but in the process of dabbling around with the paints I forgot about it completely. To my credit I remembered that a separate heart actually goes there, but when the time to paint red came, it slipped my mind that it still needed to be filled in. Not a big deal. As you'll see, I'll hit it as the painting progresses.

The banner under the figure will be emblazoned with the phrase "La Lucha", which if Google Translator is any good, should stand for something similar to "The Struggle". Now here's the weird part about that banner. Each of the four paintings in this series should have the banner. I left it off of the Tiger painting because there wasn't a good way to get it to fit in the overall composition. I would have gone to more effort to include it if each painting had a different phrase, but they don't. Wouldn't it have made more sense to have each image have their own unique saying? I think so to.

But they don't, and so I fudged that one. The Struggle actually is a fitting subscript for the series of paintings, but I don't think it's vital to announce it on all the designs.

More fine detail work with inky black paint, and I'll post another photo!

Queen of Clubs

Now that's more like it! Black really does complete the painting, doesn't it? When I'm done with a painting, or at least far enough along that there isn't much left to monkey with, I'll slap a few coats of gloss-cote over the canvas just to make sure the colors don't fade and the paint is protected from dust and wear. This step is done outside to keep the place from smelling like a huffers vacation home. However, the wind is ripping up and down the valley today and if I leave the painting outside to dry it will likely be airborne and heading to the next country before I can stop it. So after doing a quick once over with the spray, it's drying on the easel right now. It's not a problem unless someone lights a spark!

Psycho Painting

It ain't too pretty, is it? Nope, not in the slightest. But the painting isn't done and I thought I'd take the time to post one of those 'work on progress' images which some people have been asking me about. This is one of a series of four paintings based on the dreamworld levels of Psychonauts.

The image is unique in the fact that the color black plays a large part in its creation. For that reason I left it to the last, choosing to fill in the figures and colors completely before doing this final step. For one thing, it helps free me up to experiment with colors and shapes because any mistakes will be blotted it with an opaque black at the end. Also, it's more fun. You see, I've noticed that in general black can make an amazing difference to a painting. So I thought it would be fun to have something about 99% done, and looking pretty terrible. And then, almost as if by magic, black is applied to the canvas and the image springs to life.

So don't feel like you're hurting my feelings by saying that you don't like the above picture. I don't like it either... yet.

Here's another.


I've started adding the black on this one, and then remembered to take the shot. Ideally I'd have taken a photo of this one with a white border, but it's a little late for that now. No matter, you get the idea. Notice too that the black looks pretty bad as well. I'm going to need a few coats of it to get the inky effect that I'm aiming for.

One other thing. I tried to stretch the canvas to get rid of those stupid sags in the corner but to no avail. There's a painters product similar to alum which you can apply as well which is supposed to stretch canvas tightly and I think I've used about half a tube with no significant improvement. I hated to throw the canvas away, and so decided to use it no matter what the flaws were. It was the right choice, but I really was counting on the paint having some affect as I applied it. If it's doing anything, it's so small I can't tell.

I'll post photos when the paintings are complete so you can see the amazing difference black does. The other two planned paintings for this set are very similar in composition and I think they'll be quite striking when seen together.

History, please look away

One final quote, then I'm going to go back to putting up fresh content and not relying so heavily on quotes from other sites. Promise.

I found this little gem here:

"This confused version of irony can be fun and all but, at the end of the day, the history books will describe us as a people who loved Fast Five, who seriously covered a potential Trump candidacy and who spent over $40 million on Shake Weights."

Stone Giant

Just came across a great passage from Blaylock's "The Stone Giant":

[He] would stroll in among among them, bowing. He'd pause to light his pipe and to puff on it for a moment with the air of a man who has studied things out and wants to phrase things particularly carefully in order not to be misunderstood by a precocious, but, perhaps, slightly scatterbrained audience."

The man has the touch, no doubt about it.

Goldfinch

I'm still sticking with the mockingbird as my animal totem. I know someone who had someone else choose their spirit guide for her and ended up with a ladybug. Nothing wrong with ladybugs mind you, but not the first thing that would spring to my mind if I was deciding on an animal spirit to help guide me through the spirit world, or give me insight into mystical matters.

So mockingbird it is for me, but I had a very neat experience with a goldfinch today.

I was out in the back yard listening to the wind blowing through the trees and the chirping of the local flock of sparrows and goldfinches as they gave their opinion about the gale force winds that have been whipping through the High Desert. After awhile I noticed that one of the chirping birds wasn't moving from tree to tree but actually sounded very nearby. I looked over to the neighbor's roof to see if I could see any feathery guys making their homes in the eves, but didn't see anything. Then I realized the chirping was near. Taking another look I found the source. A goldfinch was perched on the fence about three feet away from me.

The bird was a bright gold color and at first I thought it must be a chick because of the small size. Its feathers looked well groomed and not the frowzy mess that chicks usually wear while they're learning to fly, and this bird had a bald tummy which is usually an indication they're nesting. So the bird must have been a mom, and a fearless one at that.

I put out a finger and slowly moved toward the bird. She kept chirping. I petted her warm tummy and then the bird walked on to my finger and hung there. What a cool experience!

It didn't last that long, only about two minutes. But it was enough time for me to get the message. More thistles in the sock feeder. Yes ma'am!

Mark Twain Gets The Last Word

Penned in 1906, but was obviously written to celebrate the U.S. taking out Bin Laden:

"I was never so enthusiastically proud of the flag till now!"
-Mark Twain

Making the Sale

I received a nice message in the mail from the $99 Art Auction saying that my "Webmaster" painting sold! Yippie!

Sure, it's not anything that I can retire on and it did take a bit of time to do, but it's a good ego boost to know that someone appreciated the message and meaning of the painting enough to take it home with them. And the news comes at a good time for me as well because I've been itching to finish up the Psychnauts paintings that I've been mulling over for awhile now. I've got the ideas all planned out, the canvas prepped and ready but I haven't set aside the time to actually get started. Well this is a gentle push, and I'll take the hint. The paint starts flying tomorrow.

Oh, I'm also painting the gas cap of the Honda Fit so that it matches the organic life icon which appears on EVE's hull from "Wall-E". But that's another story.

Shocking!

There I am, mug of hot coffee in one hand and Tim Powers' "Drawing of the Dark" in the other, when I come across this passage:

"The Irishman stared at him with the wondering respect one feels for a child who has done some tremendously difficult, absolutely pointless thing."

This little gem of a phrase was crouched between many, MANY passages of bloody beheadings and bloodlettings. After all, it's still a Tim Powers book. But it did strike a chord with me because I was wondering just that morning about the grim patterns which develop when newscasters put political stories into historical context.

A trend which has developed over the past two years is the willingness of certain news broadcasters (MSNBC, ABC specifically) to invoke a historical perspective to the stories they cover. This is all well and good, except in the case of politics. You see, politics has a certain characteristic that makes it a rough fit. Since US politics doesn't really change that much over time, since it is bound to the framework of the Constitution after all, clear patterns develop.

So when a news anchor has to read another story about how power has corrupted, or money has influenced laws, or how people keep voting against their own self interests; I can't help but look at it the same way I'd see a child who is surprised when the Jack-In-The-Box pops up for the hundredth time. Boing! AH! Boing! AH! Yeah, I get it kid. It's shocking the first dozen times, but after awhile you learn to expect it. Right? Boing! AH!

Spirit Guide

I'm thinking that I'll adopt the mockingbird as my spirit guide. I'm inspired to do so because a very nosy mockingbird has decided to become my personal peeping tom and has been flitting around my window for about a month now.

There's a fence that runs along the length of the side yard, and has a natural perch at the top which he has been making use of ever since the awning blew away. Huh? Oh yeah. About two months ago Victorville had its annual parade of extreme windstorms blow through the area scouring every unprotected surface with sand and dust. It's always exciting and usually residents will spend a few days assessing the damage once they're done rolling through the valley. This time I didn't have to look too hard. One awning down, beaten to ribbons between the houses and tattered.

The weather has been very cool, so I wasn't in too great a hurry to replace the thing. So while it was down, a mockingbird which has been roosting in the neighbor's palm tree suddenly discovered that he could have his lunch and look in at me at the same time. Bold, fearless and loud. Yeah, considering that all those descriptors could apply to me I decided that my spirit guide is a mockingbird.

I wanted to leave out a treat for him, so checked out the mockingbird diet online. From what I read, they are considered omnivorous, which means that any foodlike product should suit them just fine. Lies. All lies. They like grubs and berries. I like mockingbirds, but I draw the line at finding grubs for them. To my credit, I put out some peanuts which were promptly ignored. I'll leave out bottlecaps next. (the shiny variety, not the sugary treats)

Our Country's Greatness

Mostly I'm just adding an excerpt from this to make up for my silence over the past few weeks. Enjoy!

"But mere killing is never great, and those who carry out the killings are not great, either. No matter how much one may believe that people must sometimes commit homicide in defense of themselves and the defenseless, the killing itself is always to be deeply regretted. To take delight in killings, as so many Americans seem to have done in the past day or so, marks a person as a savage at heart. Human beings have the capacity to be better than savages. Oh that more of them would employ that capacity."

Wrong Answer?

Does anyone get the feeling that we've actually just lost the war? That maybe, must maybe we did the exact opposite thing of what we should have been doing? I don't mean that now that we've killed Osama that now the terrorists will start coming out of the woodwork to attack us in revenge or anything. Such a thing is laughable and will never happen. No, what I mean is that we've done exactly what a nation at war should do... and it wasn't what we should be doing at all. Guess we'll find out soon enough.