Studio Monday: Old Tricks

I always wanted to incorporate live (or dead) plants in my work. If the piece eventually decayed - even better. I used to do this, and a stopped. There will be more on this later as a song I listened to over the weekend really peaked my interest and now I want to do a piece inspired by it. Once that piece is in the works, I'll be sure to elaborate more on the concept. In the meantime, I continued working on a piece and started a new piece inspired by another song. I've been working on one for a while, but decided to revisit the old concept of using live plants into my work. Here's a sneaky peek of the concept with peek of new WIP: 

Don't you love the blurry?

I hope this all works out. I'm very slow when I do paint because I wait for my pieces to dry before adding more layers. I'm usually one color at time, but trying to break that. Also acrylics dry fast, but in the dry time, I get distracted. I'm working on it. Tomorrow or next week I'll post a Thoughtful Tuesday on a piece from last year as well as a recently completed piece I haven't added to my 2015-2016 gallery. Excited for all the new things and inspiration. Thank goodness for good music.

This weekend's motivation brought to you by Insomnium's "Shadows of the Dying Sun" album. 

Thoughtful Tuesday - The Suicide

In January 2015, I promised myself to complete a body of work. The goal was five pieces, at least 30 x 40 inches, all united by a theme. The theme evolved to something I still want to work on, but this is the first in that body of work. 

After years of hearing references and seeing images, I finally read Dante's Divine Comedy as a requirement in college. I remember sticking small post-it notes in my book not just for future papers, but future paintings. My professor also had book of Gustave Dore's prints illustrating the cantos that she let me borrow for a week. The one canto that struck me the most and still does is Canto XIII, the Woods of the Suicides. My imagery has always related in some ways to plant life, trees, etc. Last year, I finally felt the time had come for me to finally create my own suicide tree, and this is the final product. 

Over a year later, I'm still very proud of this piece, but there's still an itching feeling to continue with the same imagery - maybe create an entire woods of suicides of my own, or other cantos. I have so many ideas, but I've become a slow creator working on my pieces. Hopefully, this blog keeps me motivated. This public motivation.

The Suicide

You can find the image and other pieces in the 2015-2016 gallery. There are few more from last year to upload, which will happen soon. It's possible I may revisit more of Dante's famous work again. For now, this is enough. 

Next week, I'll promise myself to show images of what I'm currently working on, followed by another visit of last year's work.

Thoughtful Tuesday - Finishing and Beginning

The past two weeks have been productive enough for me to complete roughly 3/4 paintings, which means, I CAN START MORE PAINTINGS AND OVERWHELM MY ARTISTICNESS AGAIN. 

It's really not that bad. I snagged a bunch of cheap canvases for cheap because I don't mind cheap.  My art is for my own catharsis (most of the time) and if someone would like a part of it, I don't mind passing a piece along (depending on the piece and effort of course). 

Upcoming projects? There are at least 3 different bodies of work I want to do, 1 is a continuation from last year I have no posted yet because I'm still undecided how I want to list it, and a few out of my area pieces. Example: I'm going to paint an elephant...with wings... yeah....let's see how this one goes o.o.

Studio Monday: Reworking the Past

I'm happy to report I finished two pieces this weekend - one small study for fun and one I've been working on for almost six months. I plan to do a special blog about the latter once I have decent pics and it's uploaded to the site. Part of my goal is to finish paintings so I can start new ones. This goal involves a piece from my senior year of college. 

At the some point in the fall semester of 2010, I started working on a self portrait - this is back when I would paint on the raw canvas, no gesso, no stretcher bars - just me and paint usually on the floor. I miss painting this way. Low and behold while writing this, I found how this piece started:

Sometimes I wish I would just stop working a piece or leave them unfinished like this. There's so much beauty in development. 

I remember moving away from this style after a critique, left untouched, but knowing me, I have a hard time tossing pieces. Most of the time I try to salvage the piece, even if that means painting over. At the time of the critique it was already stretched so in theory I could remove the canvas and reuse the bars. Almost six years later, my parents brought me more stuff from home. I stared at it for a minute not sure what to do, but after posting the pic and getting feedback on Facebook (like my generation does), I figured, let's see where she can go now. 

Here she is, still a work in progress, the before and current, hopefully to be completed in the next few months:

Clearly I'm having a reinvention tour. 

Today's motivation music brought to you by Dark Tranquility's album "Fiction".