Paintblog, February — a long forgotten return

In our last episode, I mentioned that a third canvas had some work done recently.  I decided not to include it in that entry because the number of photos depicting the changes grew rather cumbersome, and I thought it deserved a post of its own just to keep things from growing out of control.  The last time you saw the painting, it looked like this:

If you don’t recognize that, it’s because you haven’t seen it for months.

The area on the right side of that reminded me so strikingly of a strange figure, standing, that that was the direction I went with.  I thought it might be a gathering of strange beings, with that one towering over them as the center of attention.

Since this painting has had the most extensive work done, with many photos taken along the way, I decided not to show them all, but instead focus on highlights.   If you want to see the start-to-finish video, skip to the bottom of this post.

Ironically, the figure to the right which inspired most of this had the least amount of work done.  The major areas changed are highlighted below:

Starting at the top, and moving counter-clockwise, we started with this:

I saw two figures there, the red shadow to the right being the most obvious.

On the left, we went along this path.

He’s got a very nice head-dress thing going.  And you’ve now seen a bit of what happened to his robot friend.  Robot Roll Call!

I’m not crazy about his visor, so he may lose that.  I think he looks a bit more mysterious without any facial features at all.

The next area evolved pretty quickly.

I started with a humanoid face, and then decided there should be at least one face that’s not arranged along human lines.

Finally, we have this area.

I really didn’t know what to do with this, but I started anyway.

There might have been some alcohol involved, there.

Those are the major changes.  As you can see from the full canvas below, there were some other changes as well–the big guy got some kind of head structure, as well as a totally black body behind his shell, and we found a human!  Those areas are very, very, very unfinished, so there really wasn’t much need to focus on them in this entry.

As you can see, I also started to work on the background, as it occurred to me, “Just where the heck are these people, anyway?  In some underground cave, or what?”

I’m thinking of calling it “The Arrival of the Delegates,” and if they’re delegates, they shouldn’t be in some cave somewhere.  They’ll be in a city, I’m thinking.  Incidentally, I’m reminded of Philip K.Dick’s novel Galactic Pot-Healer, which had a huge array of aliens of varying body-types, all gathered on one planet. Not that this is an illustration–it just has a common ancestry.

And if you want to see the full canvas as it went through all of this, here’s the YouTube version.

This work is obviously far from finished, but as I said, I wanted to get something out about it at this stage rather than wait for its completion.  Because who knows how far off that end might be?  The Shadow knows, heh-heh-heh-heh!  Well, great, I’m glad he knows, because I sure as heck don’t.

Thanks for visiting as always, and if you’ve decided not to buy that new Ferrari, you could always hit the tip jar up there at the top!  Ha ha, I slay me.

Paintblog, Late Feb, some works-in-progress

I know what you’re thinking, Whoah, three posts this month, and two of them actually have substance? Whoah. Well, don’t worry, it’s not a trend or anything…yet.

This entry concerns three two* older paintings that have had some new work.  Neither of them are, to my mind, finished yet, but if I waited until stuff was done I’d, um, never get done.  Or something like that.

First up we have the latest, the picture of the lake with the islands or far shore.  It looked like this when we were last here.

Well,I added the ground under the trees.

And then I added some details to the greenery

It shifts the viewpoint a bit, but I like it anyway.  I then got rid of the light area near the bottom of the canvas–I didn’t want a place to stand–and I hinted at the parts of the islands that were under the waterline.

It occurred to me, then, that these could be three of the Walking Islands  that I have painted in the past.  (Mostly on canvases now owned by others–well, that’s a hint.)  Should I emphasize that, somehow, by making the surface of the water transparent?  After thinking about it a bit, I decided no, and added some pattern details to the water.

(Apologies for the wildly fluctuating levels of color and contrast, I’m still figuring out Camera-Raw.)  (Also, I should note, I’m an idiot.)

And that’s how that stands as of now.  I kind of like it; it’s pleasant and I don’t mind looking at it.  It’s still lacking something, I just don’t know what it is yet.   You may see it here in the future, and you may not recognize it then.

Our next work, when we last saw it, looked like this.

I stared at this work months with no ideas–is it a tree? An explosion?  Some kind of giant worm?  A supernova, about to wipe out all life on earth?  Ha ha, of course it couldn’t be anything that optimistic.  But it perplexed me no end while it waited pinned to the wall.  And then one night I decided: it’s a tree.

(Apologies, by the way, for the really bad colors on that photo, and the ones that follow.  I have no idea what, or even if, I was thinking.)

I then took some of that orange and wove it through the rest of the tree til it joined up pretty organically.

And then I worked on the ground.

It looks like some odd tree on a little island (hey! a pattern) in the middle of a very cold river at night.  I reminds me of Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” (which incidentally was adapted into an excellent film by some Germans a couple of years ago).  I still think the tree trunk needs a bit of something–a counter-color, either lighter or darker–but until that makes itself known to me, it goes back on the wall, out of the line of fire.  Besides, Lovecraft described the “colours” as being both sickly and luminous, and this seems both…who knows?  Anyone out there need a cover image for a paperback reprint?

*Originally, there were to be three paintings whose progress would be displayed.  But the number of images for the third grew very large, so I decided to make it the subject of its own post.

Anyway, that’s how things stack up at present.  See you shortly, and thanks as always for stopping by.

PayPal Button

So, a new object there over on the right–the PayPal button.  That way, folks of a generous nature can help keep me painting.

I honestly expect that button will never get clicked, but the image of Charlie Brown waiting forlornly by the mailbox on Valentine’s Day was just too powerful.

See you soon!

A Painting – Feb 1st

The painting below wasn’t done in a day, of course.  In fact, the basic shapes were outlined several months ago, after which it went on the wall and stayed there until something came along to work with those shapes.  All that started happening recently.  Since the painting kind of flew through, I didn’t really document the stages.

It’s a very small picture, about the size of a text book, or a regular magazine.  (I could look up the actual size but you know, I’m sitting down so that’s like an effort and things.)

Informally, I call it The Insect Men Arrive at the River of the Cloud Men.

That’s it for now.  Thanks, as always, for stopping by.