Monday, December 01, 2008

New painting



Since I got out of the hospital earlier this year (an all-together unpleasant experience, which I'm not going to post here) I haven't painted very much. I started a landscape painting but it still sits -- mostly white with a dozen shades of green denoting leaves and grass and shadows.

I've been fending off the urge to paint for about a month now (mostly due to the fact that it takes quite a bit of time just to set shit up to start painting and with a new baby I don't really have a whole lot of time. Oh. I forgot to put a post about that. We had another baby. Oliver was born on October 20th, 2008.

I finally found some time when my wife took the kids to visit her family at Thanksgiving. I chose not to go with her, opting instead to visit my own mother. This left me home alone on Wednesday evening. I got Batman Begins on Blu-ray and watched it start to finish. I had also gotten Hellboy on Blu-ray for $4.00 so I threw that in and grabbed my sketch pad.

While watching Hellboy, I started sketching the ideas that had been floating in my head. None of them seemed to be going anywhere, so I sketched the cat as he was sprawled out on the couch. I tried a few more times to get what was in my head on paper, then I gave up. I decided to just my subconscious guide my hand and I started drawing lines and curls. After a few pages of this, I ended up with a few elements I really liked, so I set up the paints. What you see above is the result. While I have a name for this one, I'm not going to say what it is at this time. I think it probably gives away too much of what I see in it and I'd rather people see it and get their own impression without being burdened by someone else's viewpoint.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Glad to see you're back at it. I'll take a stab at it. I think the white swirls look like breasts (but the chances of me seeing breasts in a painting is pretty high, so there's that), and it, she (?), is sort of coccooned in that green thing. I think the person (?) in the bottom left has the eyes you make when you're dead, and a knife for a mouth. And the red on the green looks like a safety pin. Also, the warmth of the background and the coldness of the blue contrast nicely. For what it's worth, I'm willing to be burdened by the artist's viewpoint and I'd be interested in what you've titled this one. (sarahdigm[at]gmail[dot]com) My word verification is unwin. How's that for suck?