2003, into 2004

2003, into 2004....

Beach Boys, Brighton, crusty painting, high faluting ideas, specific palettes...

Crusty etheriality...


Not long after I graduated, I discovered the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, and I found this gave me a good deal more to believe in.

At the time I lived in Brighton, in a little terraced house on a steep road opposite a nice little church with seagulls on the roof. I was in the real world now, except I wasn't.













I was unabashed about being soft and having feelings.
(Goodness knows I always have to have something to be unabashed about. I'm pretty much abashed about everything else.)





Part of me finds these a bit namby pamby. Part of me accepts them as part of the past. Part of me quite likes the naive qualities and sometimes I think if you stick with naive qualities you attract people.










but it was all a bit fragile, breakable by unbelievers ... and by my self-doubt

and you can't sell your feelings and your sincerity very easily


though I remain unsure what you can sell very easily.

and the things you're sincere about change....

This Week's Brians

Stegosauri

Mine





Not mine... nice pixie cockerel fairy man from the days when everyone drew better

Mike Brian Dennis Carl Al Batista Randy and Leppy the Leopard

Mixing up Beach Boys and Leonardo's grotesques... will lead me somewhere





Also continuing to study said boys as part of my warming up. Dennises less good than Brians, but still got something of him in them.





Then I found an old drawing of Batista. And finished it with new lines.





But wrestlers made my life too easy with all their extraneous lumps. They already looked otherworldly. That's cheating.

















It's always hard planning leopards.

Sketch sketch sketch. Beach Boys Beach Boys Beach Boys.

Drawing teenage Beach Boys, realising David Marks looks a bit like Prince Charles.





Dennis has a shape that can sometimes be just an archetype. Dennis is fun to play with. I suspect I am not the first person to have had this thought.





Then I started sketching really fast from frozen frames on the TV screen. The picture was very low res and slightly squished from being old and reproduced many times. I am so deperate to keep my hand in with drawing since I got a job, that I've actually gone a bit mad overcompensating with hardcore nightly drawing sessions.





Extra hard to get the likenesses with the squashed fat distorted telly images. But fun.





Don't worry, Baby.





Dennis jumps, Brian on swing... just a quick one...

Drawn Ladder

Light the New Old Ladder Moon

I finally finished this version of the Brian Wilson Moon/ Heaven Ladder painting that was started back in early 2004.

I posted some of my Beach Boys fan art on a Brian Wilson message forum, and I got this surprising response...

'What luck to see Chloe's fantastic Beach Boys-artwork online! I'm finishing an esoteric SMiLE-essay where Chloe's painting, the 5'th one from top (also known as "Light The Lamp" from its presentation in Open Sky # seven, 2004) will play an all important part.
Thanks Chloe and keep up the good work!'

I had no idea that my painting had taken on a 'folk name!' Or that people were writing essays about it.

That was in reference to the original version of this composition:





And here is the new one, finsished TODAY, a little bit more shuffly and snuffly, dusty and dirty. The composition is less graceful, with the sky jammed in. I blame my four years ago self for that. But it has its own thing.

Orange Tooth Wilsons

I'm going to Sidmouth Folk Festival again today (where I drew the dancing ladies last year). In the meantime I am posting some Sketchy Beach Boys sketches which aren't the kind of thing I generally relish showing to the world in their 1st stage non leonardo da vinciness, but why not. I think I need to do quite a lot of egoless sketching in order to re-grasp the likenesses of five or six or seven whole seperate men.

Advice: Don't let dirty cats sit on your drawings.





This one has some spurious Wilsons and sketches of my extracted wisdom teeth, toppy and bottomy.

not quite things

I don't have anything satisfying that's new, but I want to update so here are some of the doodles from lately. Where am I going with these? Hmm.

Have been painting slow paintings mainly, that aren't done yet.

I got some markers for my birthday, but mainly pink and purple. I love the marks they make, but can't do an awful lot with these colours by themselves.





Simultaneously I continue to sketch the Beach Boys until I get better at it.



























And here is handsome handsome Bob.

Brian.... almost

So last Tuesday I saw Brian Wilson at the Royal Albert Hall. Brian looms large in my imagination. Since breaking up with wrestling, Brian's been looming anew, in a different way.





Even though I've drawn Brian in the past, I've not had a really bold run at grasping the specific forms before now.





So these are quite 'early' artefacts in this particular process.





Going back in time... with biros and a grey marker pen I sort of began to loosen up. Hard to be fearless with lovely Brian.









Promise to go mental soon.