After finishing the official Portrait of Larry the Zebrafish, aka Larry T. Wallace, I learned of Larry's tragic death. I think I'll spare you the details. On top of this I made Larry the subject of Iced Coffee Season this year. There seemed to be some dark sychronicity at work between the Larry Art and the death of Larry himself. But he will be immortalized when Iced Coffee Season opens for 2009.
I wanted a companion piece to Socialist Surrealism which I painted this year from an old drawing. I had prepared a canvas a while back with the borders blocked out for it. Interesting. The paintings are done in the same style but with the first one being done in a slower, more controlled manner. Saturday night I went after the second one painting in a more furious way. I sort of just threw myself at it. I think the second one is a better painting, but not necessarily because of the intensity with which I tackled it. I think with art it's always a balance between working on skills and letting go completely. I lot of people said they like Somber Fruit but I don't think it's a terribly good painting. I was too scared when I painted it and I think it's too controlled. You can see that in it. But on the other hand you can't be just letting go all the time.
I've lost a lot of my watercolor skills while I've been working in acrylics. For this reason I'll go back to watercolor class this spring.
After the first week or so of January I disappeared into the sinkhole of graphic design. Check me out...I like graphic design a lot. Maybe not 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week. But things are slowing down a bit in that department. So..MY GOD DO I HAVE TO PAINT AGAIN???? This is what it's saying inside me. The one answer, of course, is 'no'. You don't ever have to paint again. Wrong answer. Walking back into my studio it seemed like a good idea to stare at my materials for a long time. A really long time. Okay, not working exactly. ( can't these things just paint themselves? I go to all the trouble and expense of buying the supplies and now I have to paint the damned things? Do I have to do everything?!!) Then I remember that I'm an inventor of tricks.
So my trick is to do warm up exercises in paint. I'm drawing a bit too. See, I do the warm ups and then I don't even know when they end and the 'real' painting begins. I may never know. Above is one of the warm ups that I liked. Pretty colorful, eh? This is in watercolor too, a medium I all but abandoned late last year in favor of Chroma Interactive Acrylics. Oh, and I signed up for watercolor class with my wonderful teacher, Janet Hobbs.
After finishing the official Portrait of Larry the Zebrafish, aka Larry T. Wallace, I learned of Larry's tragic death. I think I'll spare you the details. On top of this I made Larry the subject of Iced Coffee Season this year. There seemed to be some dark sychronicity at work between the Larry Art and the death of Larry himself. But he will be immortalized when Iced Coffee Season opens for 2009.
