After copying a Picasso last week, I started seeing so many things differently! Palette, shapes, composition…my copy of his painting in among my own paintings made my work pale in comparison. 🙁
OK, well, no surprise there.
I tried to return to what I had been doing before the Picasso copy and started using colors from his palette to attack this work that was already in progress. Picasso kept interfering as I struggled with thoughts of the strength of his work.
A few days and many changes later, I finally got back into the rhythm of my own vision and ended up here. FWIW.
This is kind of a goofy little painting that I was really just noodling around on. It went through several changes over about a week of occasional noodling, and this is where it ended up. I gave it that title because it reminds me of the little donkeys I saw in Morocco being led across the desert or in the medinas, stacked practically to the sky with all sorts of household goods, water, cans, people, rugs, etc. Mighty little fellows!
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…
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.
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.
