Random Things

"Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself."
                                                                                                                                  - Daisaku Ikeda

Finished or not finished? That is the question!

A friend recently complained that my blog posts have become rather sporadic. She's got a point, for sure. I've been painting a lot, but I don't seem to end up with anything interesting to share.

Work on the flamingo painting continues sporadically as well. I can't decide if it's done or not. I hope to enter it into a show in May, so getting it finished sometime in the near future would be a good thing. I don't want to end up overworking it. Somebody please make me put the paintbrush down!

Speaking of paintbrushes, you may remember my bout with tendonitis last year. I'm doing fine now, but if I hold my paintbrush or pencil too tightly for too long, I get little warning signs in my wrist. I noticed that the thicker the handle of the paintbrush, the less I have this problem, so I wrapped the handles of my smaller brushes and my pencils with sports tape to build up the grip area and it seems to help. I got the idea from the artist Andrew Denman. He has a series of videos on YouTube documenting his impressive work on a special commission. I noticed in one of the videos that his paintbrush handles were wrapped. I thought it was a great idea. Even if you don't already have wrist issues, it's probably a good move to wrap your paintbrush handles if you paint a lot to prevent repetitive motion problems in the future.

The birds are starting to return to our area from their winter vacation, so hopefully I'll have more frequent and interesting posts soon. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Work on the Flamingo Continues

"As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and therefore full of deep significance."
                                                                                                               - Calvin and Hobbes

I couldn't resist the above quote. Too bad I didn't find it until after my post about artist statements.

Meanwhile, work on the flamingo painting continues. The piece seemed flat and lifeless, so I applied paint using a palette knife and then multiple layers of drips and glazes to give the background some depth. I also started to add more texture to the flamingo's neck feathers so the bird wouldn't appear pasted on.

Flamingo with background texture.
(To the left you can see some objects for a still life set-up I've also been working on.)

Close up of background texture

I think I'm liking it better now, but I'm still on the fence. We're in for a snowy weekend, giving me plenty of time to ponder it more.

Illustration Friday - Legendary

I was fooling around combining some of my pen and ink wildlife drawings with funky graphic backgrounds and came up with this combination that reminded me of some sort of legendary glam/psychedelic band for the birds, complete with the lead singer out in front strutting his stuff.