Day 53: I Tried

A friend of mine and I spent the day at the National Gallery of Art, looking at “important” works of the 19th and 20th centuries … most of it modern. This was a valuable experience since she’s been through art school; I dropped out.

I’m not a great fan of abstract expressionism, but I am tolerant and have tried to develop an understanding of it. That said, the first room we went into had a bunch of Rothko, Manet and Pollock. Yikes! Those were some disturbed individuals!

One of the other things we discussed was the Golden Mean (a Classical system of distribution of aesthetic elements), composition, and path of the eye ... ie. focal points. These are some things I’ve worked with since high school art, and I’m sure there was a passing mention in the 101 level college classes I went through. So in some ways, it’s old, and some ways, it’s new. And hopefully, you are always learning new ways to approach old problems.

With this painting, I tried very hard to incorporate the expressionism, the proportion, etc. Personally? I hate this painting. I hope someone gets some enjoyment out of it, otherwise, I’ve wasted paint.

Day 52: Alien Tree

After naming this 4"x6" work, I couldn’t decided whether it’s a tree on an alien landscape, or the alien is the tree. This was the quickest painting to date. I love it. I’m reminded of a story about Whistler (which I’ve long misattributed to Picasso) that a drawing he’d done in 30 seconds “actually took 80 years to create.”

What matters is not the time between the first brushstroke and the last, but all the life experiences that led to the work’s creation.

I’m selling this one for $1,750.00

Day 51: Floating Jawface

He is watching you. Somehow I suspect some detritus from various Salvador Dalì paintings ended up in my head. I like this, but then have always loved drawing funny faces. The human mind is good at picking out faces anywhere. It's part of the brain's mechanisms to make sense of the world around us.

:)

Day 50: Fesso

This guy, whom I met in China at an international clown festival, (see day 17: Dado, who was this guy’s roommate) had a big freakin’ inflatable hammer and the punk would skateboard around this huuuuge park (kinda like a small Central Park) and whack random people on the head. Once I was doing a street show for a crowd of Chinese gawkers, and out of nowhere, WHACK! I fell on the ground, motionless for about a minute. When I got up, the stunned audience laughed their asses off. Fesso was about 100 yards away on a bridge, jumping up and down, taunting me with his hammer before scooting away again to find another clown to brutalize.

This is now his profile picture on FaceBook, which made me proud.

It’s interesting to me how performers, can form deep connections quickly. We became friends quickly – I don’t know why – and we hung out a bunch for the month. But my theory is that when you’re an entertainer, your social group is constantly changing because you’re traveling a lot. As a social animal, we as humans need to adapt, either by forming a group, which could become insular and xenophobic, or develop the ability to make deep and meaningful connections quickly. This ability is especially useful for clowns (and other comedians, public speakers, etc.), who need to get an audience to like them and go along for the ride within the first 20 seconds.

And yes, that is a frying pan on his head.

Day 49: Three Dark Figures

Same thing as Day 47: Had some extra paint and swirled it around. I love to play contrasts against each other. One thing that always bugs me about looking at the works of young artists (including my early sketchs/paintings) is a reluctance to commit to line or shape, and as a result, everything comes out grey/muddy. I'm still guilty of that at times, but I try to always keep that in mind. For years, all the works in my sketchbooks have been drawn in ink. Why? partially to force the contrasts: nothing stronger than white against black. But also, pencil will smear over time. Archival ink, baby! The only drawback (no pun intended) with ink sketches is with the inevitable mistake: you have three choices: cover, transform, or start over. (ok, there's white-out and/or pasting a paper splice on top, but that requires time and effort, and it's less fun.)

Why am I talking about sketchbooks here, when this image happened directly on the canvas? I don't know. It's a blog. I think my mind's allowed to wander.

In any case, spending a significant chunk of my formative years in comic books, Renaissance faires, science fiction conventions and Medieval re-enactment has these figures kind of etched into my brain fibers. Cloaked figures. Red sky. Working their way through the eerie ... uh ... portal? Kind of a spooky Dungeons & Dragons scene or something.

Hm. Reading the above, I think I might be a geek.

Day 48: pointillism study #1

Painted entirely without brushes. I took the technique from Day 45: Rocky Mountains Wolf and tried to do a whole painting with it. This is nobody in particular, but when it started to look like Tom Hanks a bit, I just went with it.

Maybe Albert Brooks.

David Letterman?

Day 47: Smiling redhead

Some leftover paint and a new hefty flat brush made this happen. I looked at the swirls and saw it was hair. Then I had a struggle to paint the face behind the hair without disturbing the wonderful swirls I’d already established. This took about a week or two between the swirls and seeing what was in it. They don’t always come right away in a flash of brilliance. Sometimes it’s a slow, plodding crawl toward mildly clever. (though I really do like this one.)

She’s the girlfriend of the guy from Day 44.

Day 46: This is your brain

Dayum, painting translucent stuff isn’t easy. Brains are also one of those things that I’ve tried to draw a number of times, but never really had a life reference to draw from. Not too many people are willing to pull off the tops of their skulls for art.

Fortunately, I found a photo of a brain and worked from that. The whole time I was painting this, I was grumbling: “This would have been 10 times easier to do in Photoshop.”

I have long been amused by the whole "this is your brain on drugs" commercials of my youth ... not that I was into drugs, but the question always came up: why are some drugs "good," and some are "bad?"

Interestingly, marijuana is increasingly embraced by the medical community, Novocaine and its relatives have replaced cocaine for dental anaesthesia, merely because it lasts longer, and good ol' morphine (first cousin of heroin) is still recognized as "one of the best" by the severe pain management sector of medicine.

I'm not saying everyone should go out and get themselves addicted to something harmful (such as the above mentioned substances, in addition to cigarettes, alcohol, caffeine, or high-fructose corn syrup), but I question why punishments for using those substances, with the theory that "it can ruin your life" usually involve prison. In other words, if you get caught smoking a little weed, we throw you in prison to be possibly beaten, raped, or killed ... and when you get out, you will be ineligible for many of the better jobs ... so that pot doesn't ruin your life.

But hey, eggs are yummy. Hold the brains.

Day 45: Rocky Mountains Wolf

The wife requested this. I'm not big on landscapes so it was good to be pushed. Played with some stippling techniques. I was pleased. I've also long had trouble depicting animals. Well, realism in general has always been a struggle for me, since it takes practice, dedication, and a desire to take photographs with the brush. I figure photographs were meant for cameras.

Interestingly, I had a beautiful day in the autumn, spending a day communing with nature in the woods behind our house, hanging with the dog, and feeling the last of the late Autumn yellow and red leaves breathe. I left the dog to his devices for a few minutes and climbed up a half-fallen tree and just felt the majesty of the woods. I was still long enough that a huge flock of migrating birds perched for a few minutes. Then they took off, mere feet above my head ... the thunder of their wings was just magical, like I could hear the muscles and tendons wrapped around their hollow bones, and feel their hearts beating as one as they effortlessly defied gravity. It kills me that birds can fly just as easy as it is for us to walk. All they have to trade for it is having hands. Would I trade flight for the ability to juggle, paint, or perform basic hygiene? Hmmm...

That had nothing to do with this painting ... I just wanted to share.