Busy Bee?

OK, ok... so I'm having a little painter's block. It comes at a time when I have a lot of distractions anyway. Coincidence? Maybe. But I'm using the time to try to let my subconscious work out the prob and start up a side project: Fabrigami.

Yeah, I know that's not a real word. It's really just origami done in fabric. Which I like because it feels more permanent that paper even though you can't do everything you would with paper.

At any rate, the above is a bee that I made. As far as I know, I thought it up all by my lonesome, so I'm probably more proud of it that it deserves, but that's ok ^^ I just wish I could have gotten the wings a different color, but that would have been too many pieces of fabric for one little bee.

After this I'm going to applique it to something or other and embroider it some little antennae ^^

And I feel like my blockage is starting to break up little by little, so I had better get this fabrigami thing launched pretty quick.

Wow - I still do oil painting?!

I had just assumed at some point that I was probably just done with oil paint, but it seems it has it's uses after all.
This is my grandmother. It's pretty recognizable, but not photographic. I decided to start working on this with her cause it's such a good excuse to be hanging around, and I really want to do this before, well... she's probably not going to be around that much longer, so seize the chance.
Perhaps you can see some influence of Lucien Freud. Perhaps I would have painted it just the same way regardless. Either way, I guess it's clear I don't have his color sense, but I get by.
I'm just glad it's not a total mess, and with a little luck it will be a nice memento.

Fabrigami Defrags the Brain

Ooh, my 100th post ^^

Wow, I didn't even think about it, or I would have totally planned something better for my 100th blog post.

I'm not one for long speeches, so thanks everyone for reading.
And Spring is making me squirly, so there!

I Also realize now that I don't know how to spell squirell, but I sure think my way looks a whole lot better.

About Face! Forward March!

I really needed to do something completely different after all the flora in my life lately. And I do sort of feel bad about neglecting the male half of the species to do girlie pictures, so I thumbed through my Taschen Freud book for a male nude.

I won't be doing too many of these. Why? It's pretty damn hard to find decent male nudes these day. Art seems to have a real homophobic bent in the last 50-75 years, so people just haven't been wanting to do, display, or look at male nudes.

Granted, I think girls are much prettier to see naked than boys, I'd rather not get too unbalanced stylistically.

On top of that, I want to continue to develop my skills with the brush, and doing this type of figure brings home the need to practice more and more. My brushwork is still full of unnecessary movement and inefficiencies. Doing this type of work should help my learn to get more out of every brush stroke.

I think I may add some color to this, too. I'm thinking just maybe some reddish brown to the couch. [Sigh] That just reminds me that I need to control my moisture levels more, too. Back to work. Back to work.

With trembling fingers...

I carefully peeled back the tape that securely stretched my paintings as they dried face down.
I have never done such complicated color work in this medium, and any number of things could have gone wrong - like all the color coming off or running together. Or a big fat air pocket right in the middle of the painting. It's too horrible to even think about.
But both paintings survived. I did two - with slightly different color - because this is on the top of it, a color exercise. It just happens to be one that I wanted very much to turn out well because it is a composition I have admired for a few years but only just got the courage to try myself.
The original was called simply Fruit by Kobayashi Kokei. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a decent image of it to place with these, but here is something else he did that I found on a French site. It looks like it is probably mikan (a small variety of orange/nectarine) with some pretty gold leaf.

I hope I managed to do some justice to my fruit. I'm afraid they are nowhere near as skilled as the original, but I think it's a good start. And I will probably never get into a habit of doing such complicated layers of color, but I suppose it might be nice every now and then. Just when I feel like I have a handle on things and I know what I'm doing. I'll do a project like this and disabuse myself of the notion ;)

Dancing sugar plums they are not

These darn tree ovulations have been dancing around in my head for the past few weeks. I am not a colorist, so they have been pretty trying for me. To the point where I think I need a few days off from painting to get my head back - it's not just these. There are more than twice as many that have been chasing after me!

At any rate, they are almost done now. I definitely have to scan them when they *are* done because the delicacy of the greens won't show up in these pics.

At any rate, the composition shown here is from a Japanese painting that I have admired for a long time and I wanted to see if I could get anywhere close to it. I'll find a pic of the original to put up when I have officially finished my own version so you can see how far off I am. (I am humbled by how far off I am!)