There’s a barbeque joint in downtown Austin called House Park Bar-B-Q whose motto is “Needs no teef to eat my beef.” This title is a play on that motto, and also refers back to my last painting. Hope you like!
New Painting: Mo Teef
New Painting: Frack This!
I didn’t paint this to be about fracking, but I had just read an article about it, and the title seemed to fit this piece. I try to keep politics out of my paintings, but they seem to creep into my titles.
Or I could have called it something about “pressure.” Whatever.
New Painting: Ovation in Pinks
Here is the first painting I have completed this year. It started as something even more abstract back in November, but I couldn’t quite resolve it into a painting that worked back then, so I repainted it, and now it has become an abstract floral work. I really love how it came out.
Here is how it looked after a few days of work back in November and what it is now:
I didn’t want to lose that wonderful diamond-shaped bit of fuchsia towards the upper right, and I think it came out really well being made into a “flower.” She’s kind of queenly, I think, and seems to be engaged in a dialogue with the fuchsia flower in the center, or maybe they form a trio of fuchsia flowers with the one below both of them.
The other part I was quite attached to was the little blue “mouth “engaged in a scream in the green flower on the upper left (when the painting was turned 90 degrees):
Some brushstrokes just can’t be duplicated (well not mine; not yet, at any rate), so this little guy remains even if it’s no longer so clear that it was a mouth screaming.
“Ovation in Pinks” is available from my new shop site, here: “Ovation in Pinks.”
New Painting: Pirate Olivia in Search of Buried Treasure
New Painting: The Woobie Offers Up Advice
I did this painting a few weeks ago, right after my first white rabbit painting, “The Woobie Contemplates Revenge.” From a strictly artistic point of view, I was interested in continuing painting white on white and seeing what I could do with that. I particularly like how fuzzy his fuzzy legs appear in the final work. There’s more to this painting than just that, though. I hope you can appreciate it. We live in interesting times…
New Painting: The Woobie Contemplates Revenge
Painting white things is really fun and challenging. For this painting, I placed a white rabbit stuffed animal in a white box and lit it from two sides: one a warm light, which casts a cool shadow, and one a cool light, which casts a warm shadow. So in this white on white painting, the colors come mostly from the shadows cast by the lights.
I enjoyed this challenge so much, that I’m planning more work featuring “The Woobie,” as well as more white on white paintings. Luckily, the Woobie has a little family, so they could keep me busy for a while.
New Painting: Hare Skin Rug (Bugs Bunny)
Until my painting of Marvin the Martian a few days ago, I went nearly two weeks without painting (argh!) — quite an interruption in this almost daily schedule I’m trying to keep to.
We went to Oregon for a week, which was wonderful! We went for my brother’s wedding and then traveled around just a bit down the coast: walked for hours on beaches in Cannon Beach and Newport, and from the balcony of our hotel room in Newport, we watched whales surfacing off in the distance under a sunset. We saw a lot of art in Eugene and Portland and ate too much pretty good food.
It was also the first time we took an airplane in 6 years. We are trying to reduce our carbon footprint, and so have been traveling by train since 2005, but as much as we prefer train travel, it just didn’t make sense for this trip. The plane trips were not as bad as I feared; no crashes, no trouble with the TSA, no lost luggage, and only one really late flight (storms in Denver), though we did have to forfeit a bottle of water and a Leatherman. The clouds were awesome, which I really enjoyed (I take lots of photos of clouds from planes whenever I do fly).
I also came down with the worst case of allergies I’ve ever had, which I’m finally almost over after two weeks.
Plus, I got an illustration gig while I was vacationing that required me to spend two 14-hour days upon our return drawing illustrations for a book publishing company in London (and two days in recovery from staying up late drawing with a mouse!).
So, I’m feeling the interruption, but trying to get back into the swing of things. For this painting, I decided to paint something soft. This is a small stuffed Bugs Bunny toy. I used only 4 colors in this painting: white, cadmium red, thalo turquoise, and—just for the eyes—black. I attempted to use very few, yet descriptive, brushstrokes; standing as far away from the easel as possible while still allowing my hand and brush to reach the canvas. I think I succeeded in not overworking it, but did I underwork it? I’m not totally sure.
Another New Organics Painting: Organic Sketch 26
This time, I interwove the layers. I love how it turned out!