Mr. T: Part 5

Here is another progress photo of Mr. T (man, of course there is a solid amount of glare on the image):

I feel that he is coming along nicely. Things I need to work on next, well other than obviously finishing it, are: thin the tongue down a little on the left, clean up the ears just a bit, and figure out what I am going to do with the bow tie.

You see, other than being a Scottie dog, Mr. T's family is also Scottish. Well, mostly German but, you know, we Americans are all mutts anyways. Mr. T's family would like him to have a bow tie done in the pattern of their family tartan:

Yeah, okay, I can do that...but this then begs the question...how? How bright, how big, how much TARTAN!?

Well, let us see if we can answer these questions with some poor photoshop magic. Originally I was thinking I wanted a bright bold tartan that would really stand out, ala Jenny Morgan and her crazy bright arms. Now I am not so sure. I am nervous that all you will see is TARTAN and not Mr. T with Tartan. Therefore, plead for your help. Here are some options:

Options 1 and 2, big pattern with both bright (1) and slightly mute (2) colors:

Options 3 and 4, medium pattern with bright and mute colors:

Oh, there isn't as much of a difference between big and medium as I thought.

Option 5 and 6, small pattern with bold and mute colors:

And finally, Option 7 and 8, ex-small with bright and bold colors:

Thoughts? Do you want to see other size options? More muted? I think I am slightly leaning towards Option 4, but only so much.

The Fingers: Part 3

Oiled out the board and worked just a tiny bit more on "The Fingers:"

More on oiling out in just a moment, but man, why did I outline the highlighted areas on Adam's hand? Oh well, silly mistake, which will be easily covered up, but still, just a little annoying.

Oiling out: since I have not worked on both "The Fingers" or Mr. T for several months now, there was a need to "reawaken" the dry paint in order to guarantee adhesiveness from one paint layer to the next. I have been doing a lot of painting research recently and I think that I am going to type my findings up and blog about them. Hopefully this will help me to not only keep my findings in one place, but also to help me understand what I do and do not understand about the painting process.

Mr. T: Part 4

Worked on Mr. T a little bit more today:

In order to really "see" your painting, all art professors will tell you to get up, stand far back, and take a good look. Sometimes with your nose up in your painting it can be hard to see how the parts function as a whole. For me, there is something even better: taking a photo with my phone. These small little photos flatten the image and help me see the entire thing at once. It is lovely.

For example, now that I am looking at the above photo of Mr. T, I can tell that the tufts of hair just to the left of the bow tie are not working as well as I thought when I had my nose buried in paint.

Things I would like to resolve tomorrow: more detail on the right side of his muzzle, finish his nose, finish his ears, and figure out what color I want the background to be. Technically I should have already figured that one out (shrug).

Gray Kitten: Final

While I was in DC I brought the kitten to it's owner, ixoj. Giving it to her was not a happy thing, I was still not satisfied with it. I have always known why, but could not come up with a way to fix it. You see, the kitten is just floating, and I could not come up with a way to ground the composition. Until now, just now, aggravatingly I just figured out a way to fix it. Just now, as I was looking at a photo of it, I thought, "Oh, I should have painted a slightly darker, 1 inch gray boarder behind the image."  Simple solution. (groan)

Here is the final image of the kitten and some progress photos:

Mr. T: Part 3

Last week I went out to DC with my grandmother (who turned 90 while we were there) and my mum. Mom had an educational conference thing and thought it would be nice for me to come along, mostly so I could visit one of my bestest of best friends, ixoj, whom I have not seen for a couple of years now.

I stayed with ixoj and her husband in their wonderful new house, and I would jump on the metro to meet up with my mom during the day (speaking of, I owe ixoj monies for the metro pass I misplaced...awesome me). I went to museums and saw great things, and ate great foods, but more importantly I got to spend the evenings with my friend. It, surprisingly, was quite a rejuvenating visit. Well no, not surprising as in I didn't expect that seeing my friend would not be wonderful beyond all imagination; I just wasn't expecting it to be quite so...soulful?

Now that I am back, I am sleeping well, waking up early, working out, and I am painting. I was nervous to start painting, with my drawings pre-DC not turning out to be super awesome; however, today I am almost happy with myself.

Here is all of the progress done on Mr. T up to today:

As he is right now, he is too gray and his eyes look weird (just ran to check if it was the angle of the photo or the painting, just the photo, thank goodness). I will need to go in and darken him as I go. He is probably about a fourth finished. Here are some details, which look horrible, I really should stop taking photos with my phone:

Not about animals but still amazing: Turin Italy Tree House Apartment

Via My Modern Met:

...There are 150 trees scattered along the outside of the residential building, and they absorb nearly 200,000 liters of carbon dioxide an hour. So, the lush greenery is not only aesthetically pleasing, but its natural absorption helps to eliminate harmful pollutants (such as car exhaust) as well as disruptive outside noise. Its presence also benefits the inside of the building, too...

An Artist: El Gato Chimney

El Gato Chimney is an Italian artist, living in Milan, and his name is a curious concoction of who knows what. He seems to draw from such artists as Hieronynmus Bosch, well he is more like Bosch Light, but his watercolors smack of medieval apocalypse manuscripts.

Here is a little bit about his works from his own bio page:

Currently, El Gato Chimney's studies range over a wide variety of subjects, such as alchemy, ancient and modern art, magic, mirabilia, occultism, popular folklore, primitive art and spiritualism.The universe he portrays is dual and deceptive, like a good nightmare: a world constantly split between a daytime Arcadia and an inhabited and unquiet night, where the dividing line is clearly visible and easy to cross, both a danger signal and an invitation to disobedience.

Like several artists I love, El Gato started out as a street artist who then moved into the studio. He works primary in acrylic, but my personal favorites are in watercolor, where, I feel, his talent truly shines. Watercolor being the more difficult and pesky of painting mediums. For me, El Gato embraces the macabre in a way that is fresh, interesting, and without fear of judgement. He maintains an intellectual balance that takes potential gimmicks and transforms them into artistic motifs. This is an ability that I lack, or am hesitant to give over to. Almost as if my own reticent tendencies force me to contain my imagination in face of judgmental impressions towards "the gimmick." I am hoping that through this blog I will slowly be able to let off that stifling voice that hinders my own weird.

Here are a few more of his intriguing and inspiring works:

You can see more of his works here, here, or here.  Below are some of my favorite watercolors.

A few more little drawings

Drawing has not been super fun. I am getting a little frustrated with myself, not exactly my most amazing display of talent, if you know what I mean. Here is what we have today:

The squirrel is kind of cute, even if his hands are a little scary. The image I was using turned out to not be as clear as I thought.

A New Beginning

Cousin is gone, urine is cleaned off the walls, carpets are overall cleaned of everything that was split, including any poop and pee, and my house no longer smells of putrescence. HA! Just kidding, kind of, a little bit, about the putrescence.

Don't get me wrong, I was more than willing to take care of cousin, and even when he turned nasty (starting when his family talked to him about moving home because he was healthy enough to travel, and we told him that he was free to stay but that we also felt it was important for him to go home), I still took care of him to the best of my ability. I gave it my all: every morning, every night, every 5am pain-pill-giving/poop-bag-changing opportunity, I was there. I make it sound like a one man gig, though myself, Husband, and my mother-in-law were all there. Not going to lie, the past couple of days I have been frustrated by the amount of care we gave him. He was so angry with us the last few weeks, and said and did hurtful things. To a degree I understand, because he wanted to stay here, but only to the smallest of degrees. If you had asked me four weeks ago if I would be sad to see him go, I would have said yes and no. Yes because I will miss him, no because taking care of him is hard. However, now it is simply a resounding no.

And so it is without a heavy heart that I clean him out of our lives. Husband is even happier to see him go than both his mom and me. Husband even got me a "sorry about all of this" present--turns out that I can be bought off :) The present is a new easel! Do we have the money after spending money on cousin (his family didn't help even after we kinda asked them to)? Maybe? Should we have spent it? Definitely not. Oh well! What is done is done.    

And here it is in all of its eco-friendly glory. It is made out of a super fast growing wood called lyptus. When the trees are harvested new trees grow from the stumps, and it is also a harder wood than oak. Making it a perfect wood for such things as easels. Wonderful!

Today was the first day I have been able to get back into the swing of things. I only drew today. Being out of practice, it took me longer to draw a prep for a painting idea than I feel it normally would have, but I was happy while doing it. Here is the drawing for a small 6"x6" board:

A red betta fish. I drew it on newsprint because for some reason my cheap free printer will not copy a drawing made on white paper. It is a mystery to me as to why. I made copies because I want to draw some different ideas on top of the fish. I am either going to incorporate geometric shapes such as done here:

Mike Reedy

or here:

Louis Reith 

or some interesting color juxtapositions as seen here:

Jenny Morgan  

Tomorrow I shall pick one. Eventually I would like to try all three ideas, as types of mini paint experiments.