It liiives!
This blog, I mean, as well as my art-making. It's been going well, I guess. I had two gallery shows in the past two months, and have contacted another one regarding showing (haven't heard back, though). I've been working on two new paintings and am probably going to set up for a third, which will be nice and bloody. Yay!
In the meantime, have the first and second installments of a small illustrated story I've been working on. I'm calling it The End or the Beginning, because that's what it's about.
See, I don't normally use art as a means to directly express things going on in my personal life. My personal life affects my art, of course, but I'm not usually prone to illustrating it literally. This series, however, is close to doing that. Obviously it's not literal literal (I don't know people who habitually wear burlap sacks on their heads), but this series is about something I went through over the summer, which was both an ending and a beginning for me. It also corresponds to some writing I did about that issue, and some of these images are direct illustrations of those writings.
Again, I don't make comics, and this is probably the closest I can comfortably get to making something akin to a comic (Duck vs. Cactus notwithstanding). On a technical note, I'd like to bind these, but they're all on separate pieces of paper, and I'll have to finagle something.
So it's been a while.
That is, as I have said, what having a full-time job will do to you. I'm actually working RIGHT NOW, thanks to being stranded at home by a hurricane.
And I finally finished a big oil painting! Up top here is Sing Sing Kill, which is named for the stream that runs through town and empties into the river. "Sing Sing," like the prison, is the Anglicized version of the Iroquois name for the region, meaning "stone on stone," and "kill" is the Anglicized version of the Dutch word for stream. I pass where the stream empties into the river every day at the train station, and it's kind of a shady, dark little place tucked between the tracks (which go over the stream), a water treatment plant and some old warehouses. But it's still pretty and full of wildlife. This painting was inspired by the river and its ecosystems, which I see every day from the train. It's a weird and forgotten place, but very pretty in a decaying sort of way. It seems that paintings like this are the evolution of the Home body of work, which seems to be branching out into dreamier places. The painting was also a real bitch to photograph thanks to glare, awkward brushstrokes that messed up the lighting, and hurricanes.
Below is a watercolor. I was never really into drips, but this was a planned drip, so I'm okay with it. I tend to need to plan things completely or they turn into formless disasters. Anyway, I'm calling it Double Shell Homunculus after the Homunculus Nebula.
So, thanks to my impromptu vacation, maybe I'll get a chance to do some more painting. Yay!
...whatever could I be working on that requires the Unabomber, forest spirits, antisocial octopodes, Akatsuki clouds, the Virgin Mary, atom bombs and Jeff the Killer?
So I've finally, finally been able to complete a new painting! This is Way Down in the Valley, a kind of spiritual successor to The Valley, which I completed a few years ago. It has the same elements, double portrait with skullheads, but this one is, um, better.
These figures started off looking like this. Why would I create extremely detailed faces just to cover them with skull paint, you ask? Because I am quite out of my mind, obviously. But from a practical standpoint, it looks better. After all, if you apply face paint, you're applying it to a preexisting surface, full of color and texture, which will inform what the end result looks like. So that's what I did here. I created the faces, and then applied the makeup on top. Which I essentially explained in the last post.
There's also glitter. I haven't used glitter in a while, which is a shame because glitter is singularly fantastic.
The idea behind this painting is the same as the idea behind The Valley; it's about true love, and how loving someone truly means accepting the darker aspects of their person, going down into the valley with them and accepting the fullness of their personality and psyche, not just picking out the parts you're comfortable with.
After shirking my "Artist You Should Know" duties for a long time, I bring you Sarah Joncas, whose work falls under the pop surrealism category. Using oil and acrylic, she creates complex, multilayered images of women, evoking several emotions at once, while still retaining a unique stylization. Often her work encompasses several styles, including pin-up, classic portraiture and painting techniques, and graphic elements. Her work can be slightly uncomfortable, and she plays with the traditional ideas of portraiture, femininity and beauty. I currently follow her work on deviantART and Facebook.
So! Here's a small sample of her work. From the top:
After Dark. This moody portrait reminds me of the other, unseen side of a classic beauty queen, lying alone in a darkened room, still wearing her dress and pearls. It's a quiet, contemplative moment that may also be a little morbid.
I Think I'm Paranoid. I love the bold, graphic patterning here, especially in contrast to the more delicate elements of the figure and the moths. I also like how it's worked into the figure, making it seem as though she's blending into, or emerging from, the wall behind her. It's ostensibly a cheerful pattern, but in this context it's jarring and frenetic, adding to the sense of nervousness.
I Think, Therefore I Am. She reminds me very much of kitschy, '60s-style housewifey goth, like Morticia Addams, complete with little cartoon bat wings accompanying her lightbulb. Her apprehension is palpable.
It Became Courtney Love. According to the description on the dA page, this was originally intended to be a picture of Norse goddess Freya. But now it's Courtney Love. I kind of couldn't pass up the opportunity to have a picture of Courtney Love here, because I do appreciate her so, but I also like the vulnerability in the face.
The All Seeing. This is one of Joncas' more overtly surrealistic pieces, sort of a mashup of mysticism and pin-up girls. I feel like there are many interpretations that could come out of this image, with the eyes looking very flat and painted on (which of course they are, but in two ways), the fact that the figure is covering her real eyes, and the confusion as to what, or whether, she can see.
The Crow Charmer. It's similar to The All Seeing in its mystical element, but this one seems more traditional, calling to mind nature deities and animal familiars. While the pin-up style is still very evident, there's less modernity in this one, and the figure seems more sure of herself, surveying her dark realm.
Fangirlism has reared its ugly head once again, and I found myself with a new host of Jeff the Killer crap. Most of these were drawn on the train going to and from work, and I can tell you that drawing things like this is a great way to ensure that no one will sit next to you.
All of them are Micron pen on some kind of non-special paper, all are about 3 X 5 inches. All were drawn on whims based on stupid shit I thought was amusing in passing.
From the top:
Jeff after a shower. He's a grimy dude most of the time, sleeps outside and often can be seen with dirt, twigs, dried blood and bugs in his hair. But occasionally he likes to clean up a bit and comb himself. That girl there might be Jane the Killer, who stars in an even less well-thought-out Creepypasta than Jeff, if that's even possible. Or it might just be a self-portrait.
Coffee. This is the closest to the original image
that I've ever drawn. Which isn't very. But check out that lettering
fail. Lesson learned: Do not attempt lettering while on a moving train.
Jeff
and Jane (or whoever) again after a bout of stabbing or whatever it is
they do to express their feelings about one another. The plants were fun
to do.
Jeff
drools. Jeff doesn't particularly care about his drooling problem, even
though it's gross; he considers it a minor price to pay for his
beautiful smile. The spiral there reads "smiley, smiley, smiley,
smiley," because that was the song that serendipitously started playing on my iPod while I was working on this.
Jeff
goes hunting. Now, obviously, a knife has several advantages over a
gun, especially if you're a serial killer. It's quiet, it doesn't
require reloading and is easily cleaned, repaired, and concealed. But
when a bunch of squealing fangirls are let loose in a nature preserve
for an updated version of The Most Dangerous Game, Jeff prefers something more dramatic.
Jeff vs. Robert. If you've never seen Rubber, you need to. Basically, Jeff would not win this confrontation.
Finally,
this is just inappropriate. And the sad thing is there's an even more
inappropriate one waiting to be uploaded. Seriously I need help. But this is something that actually happens regularly, when certain significant others wake up in the night and peer creepily down at me for a few minutes and then have no recollection of it in the morning. It is so creepy.
So I'm shirking my "Artists You Should Know" habit, but my brain is somewhat fried and I already know what to say about this piece, which I banged out on a whim. Next time.
In the meantime, have this.
I'm calling it With A Knife With A Bigger Knife, which comes from one of my favorite moments in The Venture Bros. It's oil, leaves, pen and bloody tissue on canvas. Yes, it's real blood, but it's not mine. And yes, I know using bodily fluids in art is very "art school," but at least it's not period blood, so that's a start.
I used acrylic gloss medium to glue and seal the tissue down to the canvas, which caused it to bunch up and shred a bit, but creates an interesting texture. Unlike my actual paintings, I didn't have a set plan for this one, and frankly I'm surprised that I'm pleased with the result, because usually when I don't plan ahead, it's a disaster.
I sketched out the portraits of me and Blood Donor in Micron pen, and doodled in some atmosphere and vegetal forms with oil, and applied some dyed leaves, again with gloss medium.
Honestly? I have no idea about this one.
I like it, I'm sure of that, but it seems to serve as kind of a place holder between larger, more serious pieces. It's a fairly straightforward double portrait of me and the boyfriend. We like knives. It was admittedly kind of a throwaway piece. It's very small, only about maybe 9X9 inches, and served as something of an experiment.
It's also thematically related to a larger piece I have planned, which will use the brown and blue color scheme, the double portrait, and a sense of the cycle of life and death (though this one is more death-oriented) and of being two small people in the world.
The sad thing is, this is pretty much all I've been able to do now that I have a Grown Up Job which requires forty hours of each week plus commuting. The upside is that my commute is really nice, and part of that is the ability to sleep through parts of it; I take the train. The commute was actually, in part, what inspired the larger piece I mentioned above, as well as some writing. I've also taken a position as a contributor with an online publication, and recently got my first article published with them. So everything is pretty peachy on the "being an adult" front, but the drawback is that it leaves me less time for painting. Also, the access I had to a digital camera was again shot down by shitty technology, and so this, unfortunately, had to be taken with my iPod, hence the less-than-ideal image quality. I'm hoping to either get one or both of the cameras repaired and, if that fails, get a new camera. Although the prospect of blowing yet another paycheck isn't a welcome one.
And despite the knives, the blood was not acquired through any violence on my part. Today's lesson: don't try to shave when you're drunk.
