Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Blue?

Digital Painting

'Not Your Clown' series collage-y piece.  It's that time of year when I am scanning polaroids from summer, and sidetracking from the tedious process with some digital paintings, doodles, and other more exciting (than scanning) things.

Locusts

There is so much going on and nothing happening at all.  I'm in the midst of Polaroid and film negative scanning and took a much needed off ramp in order to redirect, focusing some creative energy into playing around with this digital painting from my "I am not your clown" series.  Here is the result, in case anyone still reads here.

Forgot I Had a Blog!

Oops.
Hope all have gotten through the winter time well, and are finally seeing signs of Spring.  I'm sure it will be fleeting, and we'll jump right into full-fledged Summer before you know it, even though we've had two snowstorms within the last month.  ;)
Here are some of a recent series called "I Am Not Your Clown".  They are digital paintings.

Happy New Year, and all that Jazz!

This is a digital painting I did to commemorate the passing of another year, with a reminder to continue to look forward to the future, and to forget about all the crap that happened in the past.  :)

Some Little Paintings

Acrylics on cold pressed water color paper....

Detail of Vamp

A recent digital painting.  You can see the whole thing on my Facebook page.

One Handed

I've recently had an injury to my non-dominant hand and wrist which has made completing daily tasks quite difficult.  I am able, though, to paint and draw, and have been doing that quite a bit as I heal.  This is a new series called 'Beach Club', perhaps due to time spent at the family beach house last month, and the fact that I'm still clinging to summer.  It seems so short each year.

Latest in the Redhead Series

I'm finding that it helps to start out in greyscale and then paint over in color.  I have 22 saved iterations of this face, here are step 1, 3, and 22.

Evolution of a face

While making my digital paintings, I will either start painting over a rough scanned sketch, or start from scratch.  If I can't get the face right, I'll turn it upside down, or put it in a monochromatic scale to reduce the distractions that my brain wants to see (which are not there).  It doesn't always work, but when it does, I'm happy.  You can see one such evolution here.  There were, of course, many steps in between each thumbnail I've shown.

Once I get the face finalized, I play with adding background detail/texture, and/or color.

Green and Gold

Certainly not colors I'm seeing outside today with the blizzard (ahem, if you can call it that.  We got far less than the 27" called for) yesterday.  These are two variations which ended up looking similar in color palette after playing around with the color versions I am working on right now; additions to the Royals Series.

More Details!!

Another from the same 'Royals' series.  The hustle and bustle of the season is slowing down personal art time, but here's some of the latest ....

Details, Please!

Part of me likes the nondescript, generalized rendition of the 'details' in my paintings: the 'placeholder' brushstrokes used to indicate hair, or accessories, or clothing which I start out with and paint over with more and more accuracy as I go on.  Another part of me feels impelled to continually add more realism each time I sit back down to paint more.

The need to show this increased detail may come from somewhat of a lack of confidence on my part, as well as a need to see if I can render certain parts more realistically so that I will not be judged as someone less skilled than I might otherwise be assessed.  I'm generally less comfortable showing my 'looser' work without explanation - - that it's somehow intentional, and that while I am capable of painting more realistically, ["better" ?] I just happen to prefer this particular work the way I have it ["unskilled" ?].  I hope that will go away in time, both the lack of confidence, and the fear of simplicity.

Above are details of a recent painting (which I showed in a sepia version in the last post).  I'm not done with the jewelry, I have much more to do.  See the sepia version for a general sense of how it looked before.

Recent Works in Sepia

 From my Stepchildren Series

 From a new series, The Royals (WIP)

Recent Polaroid scan from this past summer.

Redhead in Blue

Continuing with my 'Stepchildren' series....

Sticker Sightings

It's a secret thrill to come upon something I made on the streets of NYC.  I don't always have a camera with me, but when I do....

Thursday's Screenshot

Work on my 'Stepchildren' series continues.  I start with a scanned sketch, paint in Adobe Photoshop, all on separate layers.  When a file gets to be a certain number of layers, say, 15 or so, I save a flattened version, rename it with a numerical suffix, and continue to the next 15 layers, and so on.  The face and features change a lot during this process.   And as you can see, I often have a few windows open at the same time.  The redhead on the left is the preview in Adobe Bridge of another painting I've done.

'The Stepchildren' Series

I'm currently working on a series of redheads, all painted digitally with my Wacom tablet.  In the end, I'll compile them into a small book or maybe even a 'zine' called "The Stepchildren".  

Variations

Test prints of some illustrations.  It's snowing outside, and warm inside.  Hope all who are dealing with the blizzard are safe and sound.  I'm going out in it in a while, and from the looks of it out my window, I'd benefit from some goggles.  There's a little bit of a windy sidewards snow thing going on.  But that won't deter me.  Tonight, I'll go out as well, late.  For adventures.

Two Devils (with sons)

Two Kitty Cats

Two Puppies