Too many photos documenting a creepy painting

Like it says on the tin, here's too many pictures about a painting I did.

Concept sketches plus first background layer. Pretty sure I was dry brushing with a pastry brush, but it was in my brushes so.

Background. Layers of acrylic and gloss medium and ink and alcohol ink....

Using chalk to outline the composition. Chalk is 100% my best friend for big paintings like this.

Had to take a moment and draw a rough design on myself to see how it would look with a smirk like she has. I had decided at this point that instead of painting her make-up in black, I wanted to have the original background show through to push a more ethereal look instead of just woman with spooky make-up.

When I do big mixed media paintings, I always go ahead and paint in some white acrylic where I intend to add oil later. It makes it a lot easier to see what I am doing and also usually seals in the background so it won't interfere with my oils. Usually. This time, I did layer after layer after layer and the damn alcohol inks just kept bleeding through, which was fine everywhere except where it was doing it the worst, her eye. I finally used heavy matte medium to seal in the eyes and all the skeletal spots. I also used some molding paste to texture up the hair, because at this point, why not? This is before it dried.

Eyes, in. And already I'm seeing I am miles and miles better at oil painting than I was when I made the other creepy mixed media paintings in my room. 

(It was at this point I had to take a 3 day break from painting to assist people with online gambling on the kentucky derby. I have learned so many things about horse racing, most of which being that I don't give a fuuuuck about horse racing.)

And you know on my first day off I got right back to it. Her face in progress. Taking a selfie with the make-up and smirk was so worth it, that's one of my favorite details in the entire painting.

Finishing up on her face and neck and that. The kid voted I leave her hair ghostly, but I thought there wasn't quite enough contrast. I did take his vote into consideration though and kept it lighter than I had planned.

So she ended up a pretty bleached out strawberry blonde, which is perfect.

And all done. This post is long enough so I'll save a comparison of my creepy paintings over time for another post, but I have to say I am completely over the moon with her and somewhat shocked how much I've improved in the last few years that I have been doing these.

I thought this was a mail art blog. -_-

I've really had the antisocial mail blahs lately. Mostly been job hunting my ass off, which has paid off as I have orientation for my first temp assignment tomorrow. Hopefully once I get settled in I can start working through my replies or even make something neat to mail off. But for now, I wrote my 30 poems for NaPoWriMo, I am still doing my daily watercolors, I have worked the kid through so much teen drama and all that jazz. Here's a cute picture of Fen and a few more of my dailies. 

Current mood.

Fire spider.

Doodly little excerpts from a drive back home from the Coast.

On day 25, I coincidentally turned 25. (Yes,  I know I'm a baby.) I really liked how this turned out and want to do it again with a lot more time and planning. (I think I spent an hour and a half on this dang page and it's hardly 5x5)

hmmm could this be a sketch for a painting I would rather be working on right now? Why yes, it could.

I felt like a creeper painting this, but I was sitting at a park bench and this cute little house was in view. I really, really, really, love painting buildings.

That's all I got this week.

the voice in your head doesn't have to breathe

so it can just keep screaming non-stop. Try it. The kid and I agree our internal voices sort of scream inwards when we breathe so it goes AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh with each exhale/inhale.

Anyway. Watercolor a day continues.

Monochrome, hand and prayer beads.

My usual supplies.

Quick and intuitive.

I spelled dandelions wrong, first time I tried to do the writing I called it a daffodil, so I just kinda gave up. The skin tone was actually helped by the fact I was using the last of my earl grey tea instead of water to mix/ rinse.

I spend a lot of time hanging out of my balconies right now while I wait for a call. Sometimes I paint or write. Sometimes I try to get the ferret to enjoy the great outdoors with me (he always goes flailing and chirping back into the house)

I also painted this little painting of a border collie in a shower cap. Just to get myself to do something besides wringing my hands together.

And that's my week-ish. That and poems and small batch chocolate chip cookies. 

Has it been a year?

April 5th, 2017 I pulled out a sketchbook with a few half-assed drawings and shopping lists in it, tore those out and started actually keeping a sketchbook/low key art journal for the first time since high school.

Now, a year later, I filled my third (fourth, if we want to acknowledge one of the books was done both fronts and backs).

It was a trip flipping through all the pages last night. There, in sloppy sketches, short notes, little pictures, was the full last year. Roadtrips, early character sketches, pie journaling, child obtainment, court process, the great 2017 migration, bad days and good days and holidays. It felt impossible at the time for me to even finish the first sketchbook, I'm really happy now I started then.

Anyway, here's a few highlights of this sketchbook.

No cover-art this go around, save for this derpy lil dragon. No title either. Just straight into it.

I did mostly watercolor again, but I used it in a lot of different ways and styles.

I caught a few memories that had been floating around in my head.

And started a project illustrating and recording my dreams. 

The dream paintings, like everything else, didn't stick to one style either. This is my favorite one of them, I think, for how understated it is.

I drew/ painted/ carved a fair amount of skulls. "Memento Mori" was probably written/painted in here more than any other phrase. I spent a lot of time meditating on the transient nature of life and detachment from self the last few months. Which has somewhat helped in my creating, as a person paralyzed by the idea of perpetuality, it feels a pressure off to live in the moment and not focus on always attempting to make art of eternal great importance. Ironically, in accepting this, I have created more artwork that I think I will still find important years from now.

And sometimes, when I was not busy basking in the comfort of my mortality, I found time to draw some dumb shit that makes the kid laugh.

More dreams. I liked this one a lot, very loose and dream-like.

I took more time to paint from life as well. The kid plays some beautiful music and I sit on his floor to paint a lot and just spend time in proximity of each other. It's nice. He lets me pick out sheet music for him to learn, which is an endless source of amusement.

We even took a trip to the park and I painted the little coffee shop building there. I had no idea I would love painting buildings so much.

Still at the park, a quick study of the ground and the sky.

The last page. 

I've been thinking a lot lately about the little red pump by the pond in my grandparents' backyard. I would spend so much time playing with the pump, using a cottage cheese container to pour water in and pumping my arms frantically to try to get the water flowing. I felt like that pump this last week, like I just needed some water and faith and flailing to get myself going and where I wanted to be again. And that maybe I need to accept that sometimes the pump will dry out again and I'll need to start over again with my cottage cheese container and flailing.

For Ferret's Sake!

Back in the fall, I wanted a pair of rats. But then I got a few messages from my friend asking if I wanted a ferret. And messages from her girlfriend about what a good ferret parent I would be. And snapchat after snapchat of said ferret. And assurance that the ferret was potty trained and the perfect fit for me as a person and... well, his name is Fenrir and I love him.

Look at that little face! 

So my little project last week was painting a portrait of him in his natural habitat- trouble. 

He inspired it, fittingly, by ripping the packaging open on this canvas while he was hopping around, chirping like a little jerk. 

I covered how I tackle pet portraits last post, so I want to focus on what made this piece especially fun.

The little toe prints that he's "in trouble for" in the painting. 

To get the ferret print effect without the fear of everything going to hell, we took Fen when he was placid (a rare occasion) gently dabbed his front paws on an ink pad and then pressed them against a sheet of paper. I cannot express that the only thing that made me feel more ridiculous than fingerprinting a ferret, was the fact that he went along with it so willingly. We took him to the bathroom to wash his little paws after and he grabbed the washcloth and wiped them off himself. It was criminally cute.

Armed with the prints, I carved little stamps of them. To make the prints on the canvas, I used the stamps and a very rough fan brush to lightly drag the paint like his fur would.

I was beyond happy with the end result. It ended up being the perfect cross between weird creativity that I crave and a flex of my technical skills (I even got to slip one of my hands in there.)

One for you, one for me

It's not Wednesday, but this is what I wanted to post about this last Wednesday, and by the time this coming Wednesday rolls around, I am going to want to post about the current projects I am working on now. So. Blog time.

I spent the last week or so working on a fairly large commission. 12 x 16 inches, acrylic, canvas, this:

I loved working on it. Genuinely, I really love working on commissioned work. Just knowing the painting is actually going to be loved and live somewhere besides my stairwell in what we affectionately refer to as the "limbo gallery" (or worse, in the closet) while it desperately waits for a home adds a whole level of motivation to my work. 

Commissions are where I really focus, use, and improve my technical skills.  

I start with the solid, well planned outline. Especially with pets I have to get general fur pattern and quirks down so that the recipient (in this case, the son of the client, it'll be a surprise birthday gift) knows it's THEIR pet. 

I usually start with the eyes. Sometimes I do eyes, nose, ears, sometimes I save nose and ears for later. Mostly depends what paint I already have out.

I focus, on all my work, really, the most detail around the eyes and rest of the face. The face usually takes about as long as the rest of the body combined.

I use reference pictures, of course. I used to use my laptop but now I print them out to size. Half so I can see them with my glasses off so I don't give myself a migraine and half so I don't get any more paint on my laptop. (Besides, I found printer ink for really cheap on amazon and definitely write it off as a business expense now, so I can justify myself.)

There was a time when my realism would be an aim for complete realism. It isn't anymore. I leave in brush strokes and raised bits of paint and little things that whisper "this is a painting". It's a lot less stressful this way, which makes the piece turn out better.

Cat number two, was of course added in the same way. Face, body. Then the white wall behind them sponged on, then the fridge painted in. 

Roughly, this took me 6-7 hours from deciding on the composition to finished painting. I only really spent about 2 hours at a time on it (I measure my time in Seabound albums, currently. So I'd listen to both their albums I really love and then quit for a while). 

And in between those times, I took a break from painting by painting. 

I had this idea for a mixed media painting with acrylic and oil floating around in my skull. When I sketched her out, I just had to follow through and do her.

She turned out, as my work often does when I am left to my own devices, a lot more grungy and dark than I had originally intended. Somewhere the whimsy was lost, probably in my mood this week. 

I let her oils dry before adding the rest of the acrylic.

And here she is. With wild flowers in her hair, waiting to be reborn. This was for me. 

It's funny, because if I were to pick between the two paintings to say "this is what I am capable of" I would tend towards picking her over the cats. I've noticed that time and time again, the pieces I like the most seem to be the least popular ones - wherever. If I post them on instagram or show people my artwork. Invariably, the work that I feel like is my style, my creativity, my spark, passion and good ideas merits a very lukewarm response compared to the rest of it. 

Which is, of course, a matter of taste and perfectly fine. Because canvas was buy one get two free so I got two extras both times I bought canvas for commissions this last week. I'll keep stretching my technical skills on what sells and my wings on what makes me warm.

Things that made my soul sing last week

Something a little different this week. Not because I didn't do any art, but actually because I did so much art very little of it is done or shareable at the moment. Here's a few things that made me happy and refueled my creative tank between glaring at business tax obligations and slowly chipping away at a 12 x 16 inch realistic cat portrait commission.

Oils. Good lord, oils put some life back in me. I pulled them out to start a large mix media portrait and while I had them out, did a "quick" little painting of my hand on a spare background. I think this is my first oil "from life" and I loved doing it. Note to self. More oils. More oil hands. More oil anything.

Speaking of hands. We went for a long walk downtown and really spent some time looking at a couple of the murals. This one in particular, which of course I didn't take a full picture of, we stood in the empty lot and talked about the technique and what we liked about it and I explained to the kid, approximately, how it would have been done.

We got up close and personal and really admired the little splotches that gave away the fact it was spray painted. And I was in love with the cracks from the paint underneath.

Note to self: buy spray paint. Do a mural.

On this epic of a walk, we passed a tea shop and I mentioned that we could have a tea party for a hell of a lot cheaper at home where it would actually be dairy-free and quiet. So the kid says "Can we have a tea party?" Yes, yes we can.

We got all dressed up and after our tea we were discussing themes for future tea parties. A "retro futurism" themed tea party came up and he called his grandma to ask what she thought now would be like in the 50's. She went off on a tangent about the cold war and how gay used to mean happy and I snapped this very very Norman Rockwell -esque picture. Which I cannot wait for a spare moment to paint in oil.

Finally, it snowed. Which got me all geared up for winter as a concept and, well, was a novelty anyhow. My husband forbade me of posting photos of my snowman on the internet because he's censoring my art, but it was a good time.

Now back to the soup, and the laundry, and that behemoth of a cat painting.