Art Blog » March 2006

Dog on her bed

Did this little 4 x 6 painting from a reference photograph of my dog, who will never actually hold still long enough to be painted. It’s challenging to paint detail on such a small surface when the canvas is so rough. Fun, though.
 
 

elephant day 4

Last night I spent a good 3 solid hours working on this little guy, but there’s less visible progress. I worked on some details, like adding metal to the body so that they ribs don’t show through as much. I also covered more of the head and started strategizing about the trunk.
 

first figure day 2

Started applying real color on top of the underpainting this week. Except for a little bit of burnt sienna on the very bottom of the canvas, she’s all filled in with real colors. If you look at the full body photo, you’ll see that she’s a bit on the blue side now. I’ll probably warm her up a bit next week.
 

tasty

I found some yummy models to pose for my at-home painting this past weekend. I’ve been inspired by Elin’s way (in her daily paintings) of taking various household objects and painting their portraits — I find that it takes the pressure off of me to do something amazing rather than just do something. If I try to always do something amazing, I’ll never pick up the paints. These two friends are probably bound for a quesadilla tomorrow night.

elephant has a head

I got all hunkered down with the elephant last night. Didn’t even take the dog out of hiding (though she did get to pose for a picture with the elephant). I added lots to the elephant’s body, which is now almost completely covered. I also created a complte frame for the head with little pieces of bar, and then started covering it. Exciting! Here is the elephant from the front and here from the side.

first figure

I started an oil painting last night of a nude female model. I spent the whole time just using some brushes and burnt sienna (no white or black or any other colors). You can see the result here. Next time class meets, I’ll paint over this burnt sienna underpainting with actual colors.
 

elephant gets skin

How the elephant got its skin: Take a sheet of metal. Using the plasma cutter, hack it up into smallish pieces (1-4 square inches). Take once piece at time, weld it to the skeleton using the oxy-acetalyne welder. Heat, bang with hammer, weld some more.

I started this process on Wednesday night and got the elephant about 1/4 covered in skin. This process yields much better results on small creatures like this elephant and bull than it does on the dog, I think. Here are three pictures of the elephant, partly covered.

elephant begins

Last night I also started welding a new project (last week I started it by cutting and preparing the first 12 pieces of metal, but it was last night that I began attaching them). This will be a little elephant, standing only about 8 inches high. He doesn’t photograph very well right now, so you have to imagine you can see him in three dimensions. Here he is from the side and from the back.

dog continues

Spent a few hours tonight working on the dog laying an egg. Did a combination, for each piece of skin/armor I added, of forging, welding, and then heating with a rosebud and banging (in that order). I started adding to one front leg, but it’ll need some more work before it looks anything like right. Here she is viewed from above, with ears on show!