Phalanges Envy

I'm pretty proud of this piece - it's acrylic on a piece of wood I found on the street - the image went through a few more cartooney iterations in my sketchbook and imagination, but in the end it turned into something a little darker than I had originally thought of. But I like it alot, and as with all paintings, it looks much better in person. I'm back to my clean-line-loving style with this one, but tried to take a page out of the Frank Frazetta handbook - he always has such an amazing way of focusing the viewer's eye, and uses both color and crispness of image towards this end. If you look at some of his paintings, you'll see that the image is only 'crisp' where he wants the eye to look. And I just thought what an amazing bit of artistry that is...... So this is my first attempt at doing something like that.....

Oh yeah, and this is a biggie - 61 by 72 cm

Irona Revisited

Don't ask me why, but for whatever reason, when I was a child I loved Ritchie Rich, despite that damn dog Dollar who I actively hated. My favorite character, hands-down, was Irona. Something about her just really caught my fancy - maybe it was the red hair, the maid's uniform, or the fact that she was like the Tin Woodsman in drag - I dunno.

But she's what I was thinking of when I did this Steampunk creator and robot.....

Helium Icarus

So I've been really into the work of Ashley Wood as of late - I just think his images have such an amazing amount of energy, and despite (or maybe because of) the apparent roughness of the images, I just really love them. I've found in the past that rough paintings just didn't appeal to me as much as the more detailed work, but after looking at more artists' work, I've come to really appreciate just how much energy and thought and true skill go into some of these works that don't have the clean lines or the perfect anatomy. Somewhere I read something by an artist who was complaining that he felt that he had to choose (in his works) between perfect anatomy and the sense of motion, movement, and energy. I think that I'm finally starting to understand just what he was talking about.

I was also really trying to restrict myself in regards to the color palette - I've had no formal training, so all of this is really just trial-by-fire, and I think that in the past some of my colors have been a little too primary.

Alright, so monologue aside, I wanted to do a painting where I really tried not to get too detailed or 'clean'. I chose to redo an image that I had already used for one of my early screen prints so that I would feel less need to plan or feel like I was losing anything in an image that I already had in my head. This image was already 'safe' because I have it in pencils and screen print already, so I felt fairly ok with butchering it, if that was what happened. So here it is.

Robots

Ok, I've been a little lazy about posting, but I have been working, really I have! But with the light being so bad around Amsterdam these days - as in non-existent, so cloudy, you can positively feel people yearning for Spring - it's been difficult to even think about taking a photo. But with the onset of some sunnier - if not warmer - weather, I had the chance to beg Steven to take some semi-decent photos for me. I'm not saying they're perfect, but at least they were taken by a hand that doesn't have the tendency to shake quite as much as my own....

So as for these little Robots, I've just been wanting to do some sketches with paint - didn't want to put too much planning into it, just wanted some fun images that could be plentiful and that didn't involve pouring my heart and soul into so I felt like I could finish one in a couple of hours instead of my normal agonized process which takes a week or four..... here are the first three.....

they're all 5 x 7 inches, all acrylic, no planning, just sketching with paint.......