The Minotaur and the Dribbly Storm

Here's one of the paintings I finished in March. (Click to enlarge as always)

It's an oil painting including the Minotaur that I started maybe nearly three years ago. It actually feels good completing 'old' paintings and makes all this feel like an ongoing process rather than a series of frivolous mistakes.

Funtime mechanical Monkeyboys: Epic

I've been casting around for a while in the depths of a deep manscribble chasm, in search of some pertinent shapes that I will, I hope, condense into colour.

UPDATE:

Well, I've had bugger all comments so I'll switch things about a bit!






If that drawing was confusing, it was partly influenced by this ancient chinses lion sculpture:





And this lion too:





I collected toogether a fair few images of sculpted lionhood in order to better construct my own lions, eventually.

It's all looking a bit chaotic at the moment but I assure you, bloggies, there is method to the madness etc etc.






Sometimes I draw quite fastly:






Some men are less prone to do fun things with their faces but they look a bit like aliens so that's something I can potentially work with:









These two had comically contrasting cheekbone and eyeball configurations (at the bottom is a retarded flat doodle cat):






2 scrappy headlocks:





Randy and John with bulge:

Josh's comment on this next one when I posted it on myspace: 'I love Cena's dumpling arms in that top one. It belies the monkey I see in him but it's nice seeing a radically different representation.'

My response to him at the time:

'Cena does have simian qualities, but counter to that he has short arms and legs. One of my theories about his success as a wrestler is that his physique is very immediately recogniseable in sillhouette, which is one of the requirements for a great cartoon character. It's partly recogniseable because by normal standards it's quite peculiar and if one is feeling unkind, ugly, but Vince doesn't mind that because he doesn't understand the power of male beauty and is a shameful visual-manqualities-aesthetic-autistic. Grrr!'







just two of those:





falling men:





cena face with writing:

Some of the writing from this page, which was essentially instructions to myself:

REPETITION IS BAD: make it WORTH drawing the same people a lot...

As much as a I want to get the construction right, I don't want to fall into a formula... I SEE MORE each time after all...

experiment with space, perpective, geometry... Randy's face as a contrast to Cena, emphasise nose bridge lighting that makes it look classical... + sensual top lip all curvy + full... emphasise geometry of pout... Randy is a pout-elf in comparison... some of my studies are technical but I aim to see cute...

(On John Cena) could play with perspective of his peculiar planes of slab ear jaw face... effectively cheekbones are tiny narrow little triangular things that jaw hangs off like big lollopy cartoon custard... nose somehow has to be 'right'; more intricate than you'd think.... possibly shape of cheekbone part of face is more important to do intricately and tight, the rest (bottom) can be loose and extreme and rubbery...

Idea: big tongue variations?





Cena Randy blue writing page:

Intermission

By the way... I used to paint soft sad lady lumps. And slightly different sorts of fat faces. I did this giantess based on Sarah Michelle Gellar for my degree show and now she's available at cafepress:





Now back to rumpent erumpency:

blue lean thumbnails (one man leaning on another man's rump):






more falling kitty/s:





pink kitty/ kittyboy collection:





Lion Cena:






fatface headlock randy colour thumbnails:

Bye this stage I was frustrated at my self-imposed exile from the land of colour. So it creeps in in sketchy ways. Coloured pencils are a nice bridge between drawing and painting techniques... they can cover both.











very jaggedy sketchy cats and heads:










This next one was on a very loose evening page of drawings. Only afterwards I realised that I had channelled my ingrained memory of the scene in Powdered Toast Man where he rescues the kitten.





silly blue heads:





Rainbow fun time mechanical monkey boys:

the Era of Too Many Rich Reds

Well since I seem to have quite a lot of pictures to show you, I might do the paintings first, pace myself a bit.

There’s a palette I’ve used for a lot of paintings over the past year or so. I’ve been trying to finish them so I can finish up this era.

‘The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.’ -
Freda Adler

Lately I’ve been finding these colours problematically bright and sweetie-like. There are too many of them. (Though this also presents an interesting challenge…) In the paintings I’m planning, the colours will be more ‘limited’, one way or another. At least limited enough that I feel in control of the colour and that it doesn’t dominate the other formal aspects of the picture. And so that it doesn’t look horrible and make me want to be sick.

Let’s be thorough about this. Here are the colours I’m lumbered with:


Michael Harding Phthalocyanine Blue and Zinc White





Grumbacher Pre-Tested Oil Quinacridone Red





Grumbacher Pre-Tested Oil Cadmium Barium Yellow Deep





(I think I made the yellow big because yellows are tricky bastards.)

Grumbacher Ultramarine Violet





Old Holland Flesh Ochre





Mussini Burnt Umber



Later, when I came back to the palette and it all seemed a bit too warm and cosy, and I had just bought a MASSIVE tube of raw umber, I added that to the mix too.

It’s the size of the big tube here in front of the little tubes:





Only it’s this colour:





Wikipedia has this useful piece of info about Raw Umber:

Raw Umber is a color that resembles raw umber.

I have a brain that doesn’t like wastage. So when I have a great big tube of a colour, I mind less about using it liberally.

Some of the artist grade oil colours are very expensive, so I become quite… aware…of this when I use them.

The thing is, at the moment I’m veering more toward using acrylic and other waterbased media UNDERNEATH a final layer of oil glazes, rather than using oils alone.

This is because acrylic dries fast and flat, is pleasingly opaque and allows for a more dynamic ‘drawing’ process in which changes and adjustments can be made spontaneously. The combination of acrylic/ the other plethora (plethora!) of media compatible with acrylic/ and finally the richness of oil colour gives quite a lot of scope for intricate other-worldly finishes, and quite a lot of scope for the painting to develop a strong sense of purpose along the way.

So this is Shelby, she’s a lady I painted with just oils, and taking advantage of the blobs and crags that inevitably appear. Using the above palette, I should add. I don’t think she’s finished.





Here’s her face in closeup so you can better see the texture. She’s painted on a ceramic tile:





in contrast, here’s a tiny painting from a while back painted in this palette but with a drawn/ mixed media underpainting and quite a lot more sensitive detail. Of course, it all depends on how much you like sensitive things….





Now a peculiar half-breed… a painting that was getting on quite well being shiny and plasticky, but which has had a decisive opaque oil makeover in recent times. It’s another startled giraffe:









That’s all in the same palette. But I have been subduing it more, painting in flatter swathes with tertiary kind of mixtures, rather than being dictated to by the bossy primaries.






Now… this one’s got really weird. Bob said to me it’s funny that I should turn on a particular picture and call it weird when I’m always painting weird dog explosions and minotaur tantrums. But I’m finding this one tricky. It’s based on some of those old drawings, but it needs to evolve its own authority, it might need a radical change.

I think maybe it’s a transitional type of thing where I’m figuring out HOW I’m going to paint and using wilfully obscure combinations of subject matter and atmosphere.





And Kurt’s developed a bit of a tan.




Here’s another old one in the same palette. This one’s all in oils, but with the texture worked up to a fair old level of detail and teeny tiny brushstrokes and flourishes. There are lots of ways I like to paint, but I think this isn’t quite the way that’s right for Right Now.






I have more painted stuff to show, but I will save it for an imminent follow-up, since it’s all in different colours and generally it’s got a lot more to do with bats. Then there will be some drawings too.