Continuing my exploration of drawing versus painting -- or drawing + painting, or whatever -- I started and finished another painting in my latest series. Or as Steven LaRose would say, cluster. I haven't ever really done this before, but I'm interested in exploring a few different areas here, so I'm fooling around. I'm mapping out the territory I can possibly occupy between painting and drawing; I'm examining flatness, and the paint handling that results in it; and I'm experimenting with being less controlling and less concerned with the final result.
Someone commented, about my previous painting, that they'd seen better art on truck tire flaps. I replied that the person who first made that chrome silhouette of the reclining woman was a hero of mine. You might have thought I was joking.
Of course I was, and of course I wasn't. I think most artists only dream of having the kind of cultural impact those chrome ladies have had. I'd be thrilled if that many people thought something I'd made was worth buying and displaying as much as that dopey mudflap.
So this painting, like the last one, is on Ampersand's Gessobord. It's somewhat bigger at 16 by 20 inches. The background started out as Van Dyke brown, but I ran out while mixing, so I had to add some other colors, most notably Mars Black, which is so dense it ate the other pigments, so the background just ended up matte black.
The colors are Gamblin metals. The figure is Silver and the flowing lines are Copper. Each tube weighs about ten pounds. And those are the small tubes! Okay, I'm exaggerating. A little.
As before, I thinned the paint with Gamsol until it flowed like ink. This was a little less than optimal with the metal paints, which resisted flowing -- I imagine because the little metal particles got in each other's way. Also as before, I painted it propped up on my windowsill. Kind of dopey but it worked.
