Finally got back to my painting as the weekend kept me away from my art & stuck bartending. I was just examining my piece after I got home from work, & noticed a pretty significant flaw in my preliminary drawing. Luckily I hadn’t started painting in the area that needed correcting, so I was able to re-draw the outermost level of cubes & align everything to the proper spacing. My measurements had been off, & the mistake would have been quite noticeable in the finished piece, so I’m greatly relieved that I caught the error before it was too late to fix. There’s a lot of masking necessary in this piece, so I’m a little worried about paint being peeled off the panel as I remove layers of tape. So far, things have gone pretty smoothly, so I’m going to continue to take my time, be patient & try to be as careful as possible with everything. I still find myself obsessing over little imperfections, the under-drawing showing through slightly in areas, tiny hairs or lint in the paint- all things that no one’s ever going to notice except for me. The best part of all this is that every time I peel some tape off from a masked area, I get to see a new part of the painting for the first time. It’s a pretty awesome feeling when something turns out exactly how you want it to. I never know with my paintings, always worried that the final piece won’t look right, or that I’ll make some kind of mistake that ruins the painting before it’s finished. There’s such a huge element of surprise every time I paint. Even though I’m the one who’s creating the work from start to finish, there’s some part of me that constantly doubts I can pull it off. I hope I can pull this off.
All the preliminary work is done, so tonight I’ve started the actual painting of The Big Bang. I had to do quite a bit of math & measuring in order to get everything spaced just right, then I took a few nights of color-mixing and paint testing. I created a color chart (pictured) to make sure I was mixing all the colors to blend evenly & not too abruptly from shade to shade. The jars on the left are all the colors I’ll be using on the cubes in the painting, going from white in the center through a spectrum of yellows, oranges, & reds towards the edges of the panel. There are basically 3 sets of cubes- one yellow, one orange, & one red. Each cube set has 2 shades to blend into the next set. Example: The center cube (which is taped over in the pic) is white, and the next cube set spanning outward from the center is yellow, so I needed to blend the white to yellow evenly between the 3 visible sides of the cubes. This is repeated with the next set (yellow to orange), and the next (Orange to red), ending with the red set fading to purple cubes which end beyond the edges of the panel. Sounds confusing, and it is, especially keeping track of which colors go where, which is why I’ve numbered all the color jars. In the photo above most of the cubes’ sides facing the viewer have been masked off & I’ve started the application of the 3 main cube colors. The whole color scheme is meant to simulate an explosion using geometric shapes radiating from a small white center cube. In the spaces between the cubes I’ll paint a space-scape complete with star systems, galaxies, nebulae, etc… Having done so much initial work on the set-up allows me to be able to just paint for a while, with only some additional masking. Usually on most of my pieces I’m having to think about technique and application as I go along. I think all the preliminary work I’ve done will really speed up the whole painting process, & I hope to get this piece finished in 3 weeks. I’ll be posting another in-process shot in a few days, & I’ll try to keep documenting this piece from start to finish, trying to explain things as the painting progresses.
Black Tower 6
Just getting to see the scan of this new painting for the first time. I haven’t felt this satisfied with one of my paintings in a long while. I really took my time with this piece, especially in regards to the landscape elements. I’ve been looking at a lot of Frederic Edwin Church’s landscapes for inspiration lately, really trying to understand the use of color to depict distance.
Black Tower 6 detail
I obsessed over the mountains & trees more than usual, giving much consideration to all the natural elements of the landscape. I thought that trees would most likely be growing in the valleys and crevasses rather than just randomly all over the place, & they wouldn’t all be the same color. I’m also trying to understand the concept of land being lighter in the distance & darker in the foreground, as the light hitting the foreground would be more dramatic and have more contrast. Haze comes into play, as the atmosphere creates a blurring effect as land recedes into space. This technique seems to apply to the clouds also. There are so many ways to paint a landscape & make it look believable. I’m just trying to get to a point where my understanding of space & my level of craftsmanship allow me to balance focus on both the application of paint as well as the science of light & sky & land.
Preliminary sketch for my new piece, The Big Bang. At 16″x20″, it’s my largest piece since The Shape Of Things To Come, which I painted a few years back. I’m going to take my time with the planning of this one, as it’s more technical than most pieces I’ve painted recently. I’m going to post some progress shots of this one as it comes along. New tower painting will be posted tomorrow. Can’t wait to see how it looks!
Influences: Michael Whelan
Considered a master in the realm of fantasy & sci-fi art. His ability to render otherworldly places with such clarity & vision is a true inspiration to me.
Biloxi, MS after Katrina, 2005.
I’m gonna start posting some of my older photos more frequently, as this shit weather has been quite the deterrent in regards to my photography. I just finished a new painting last night that I’m very excited about. It’s too big for my scanner, so it’s going to be a few days before I can get it professionally scanned & up on the site. I’m starting work on a huge new piece (huge for me, considering my work has been almost miniature lately) that’s going to depict the creation of the known universe. I’m back to being inspired, out of my most recent slump, & ready to turn out some awesome new work!
