Shop Talk

The paintings for the Tomato Art Fest are done!  Yay!  All that's left is to put the info on the back of them (title, medium, contact info, etc.) and delivering them tomorrow.  I do wish I hadn't obsessed so much on the carnival theme.  I would have gotten more paintings finished.  C'est la vie. 

I hope the caterpillar painting's photo is okay - it was a bitch to photograph. Then again, I didn't have the greatest equipment for the job.

I also went ahead and got another painting started.  This one has been floating around my head for about four years and I guess it decided it was time to come into the world.  It pretty much put itself on the board when it came to sketch it out and block in the colors (or rather, block in *some* colors.)

I accidentally got an oak board when I bought

supplies a while back.  I wasn't sure about it when I framed and gessoed it.  The grain is much different to what I'm used to - it is very deep, compared to poplar, and textural.  I want to play with it now with dry brush and building the colors with the base color in the grain and just dragging the other colors on top of that grain. 

I want to advance my skills and damn it, I'm going to do it!  My paintings need a bit more...what's the word?  Sophistication.  Keep the whimsy and odd but advance the techniques. 

My re-ment came on Thursday!  I ordered some loaves of bread and ceramic plates to put them on.  They're so tiny, yet detailed!  The plates are about an inch square and the loaves are about as long.  They even have the cuts in them so they could 'expand' as they 'baked.' 

I see why so many people get hooked on collecting the stuff!  I want a few more things, lettuce being in the mix, of course. 

This means I need to properly set up the shrine.  Altars, I'm used  to having but this is a new thing for me.  For one, I'm not used to having a deity take so much interest in me.  I've had a few that asked me to do things for them but not *this.*  Then again, there haven't been that many I would even consider setting up a shrine for.  I mean, there hasn't been any I really considered cultivating a relationship with. 

This is new alright.  I've resisted the whole deity thing from the beginning.  When I first became Pagan, way back in :::coughcoughmumblemumblecough,::: everyone was insistent on two things: everyone had to become clergy as soon as possible and everyone needed patron deities.

I never was very good at following the crowd or the rules but look at me now...and I can't figure out way a god of chaos is interested in me.  :-D

A post about painting and Egyptian Gods in which Star Wars references were NOT made...

I was seriously considering blowing off tonight's entry.  Sleep will not be long in coming tonight, I hope.  I worked about six hours on a painting today and when I say six hours, I mean "turned on the podcasts and off I went without a break."  I listened to some old Snap Judgement Spook episodes and Dreamland, plus one interview with Brian Cox that I completely forgot I had. 

The painting ended up being redone from yesterday, but I was prepared for that.  I'm not entirely in the love with the background - mostly the purple left from the previous composition. 

I hope the painting will be fine.  After I finished for today, I hung it on the porch in the usual place by the door for the night.  A storm blew up and it was a strong one.  The wind blew the rain in horizontally...all the way to the front door and the painting.  Hopefully, it will dry without any spotting. 

All this work today...I suppose some people will be disappointed to find out it is the third composition for that board.  I finally just painted over the ferris wheel.  It just wasn't working and it was a chore to work on - hell, to look at again.  I had forgotten my rule of thumb: if it doesn't make me smile or chuckle, then it needs to be gone.  It's a lesson I've been relearning on several fronts lately. 

Perhaps that is why Set is back, perhaps He was never gone and I was just not in shape to perceive Him (hell, I could barely perceive the mundane there for a while.)

ANYWAY...

He's been on my mind a lot lately.  A friend posted in her blog night before last about the Furies and mentioned how they have been maligned in modern times and how they were originally storm gods.

The same could be for Set.  I'm not saying He has a completely undeserved reputation and He is all puppies and ice cream (heh.)  It simply isn't the whole picture. 

He is one of the oldest gods in the Egyptian pantheon.  Of course, one the best known stories about Set is the one involving Osiris.  You know: family squabble, Osiris gets murdered (there are two different stories about how it came about) and it's all because of jealousy.

But was it?  Really?

The thing about mythology is it sometimes get influenced by whoever is in charge.  In the older stories, Set is simply the opposite of Horus.  He was Night to Horus' Day and they were equals - more like yin and yang.  Some say this is because the lands were in peace, Set's North and Horus' South.  Somewhere along the line, the South may have gained more power, hence Set being maligned. 

What does this have to do with Osiris?  If you look at the stories, in the beginning, Osiris was a vegetation god.  That's it.  But once Set got a hold of Him, Osiris descended to the underworld...and became Lord of it and of resurrection.  In other words, He went from being a vegetation god to being a Big Deal.  Without Set's actions, He may have never risen (pun intended) within the pantheon.  I suppose it could even be seen as an initiation. 

I could make a comparison to Darth Vader and Obi Wan but I'll refrain.

Coming back to today's painting, destruction was certainly the name of the game.  Hopefully, this comp is infinitely better than the other one with the ferris wheel.  I had wanted to do something different but I don't know.  It just wasn't working.  Perhaps the idea just needed time to go to ground and come back bigger and better.   

Tomato Art Fest time again!

Good god, it's been over a month since I posted here?! Well, it has been a little busy...

I'll admit I had my doubts about entering the Fest this year, mainly because I couldn't seem to get anything off the ground. No ideas. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. I finally went back to an old sketchbook to look at some ideas that didn't pan out before.

I had this idea three years ago and just couldn't get the village to fit into the tomato. I guess it just needed time to ripen (pardon the pun.) Here's the first version:

I actually liked this version but I just couldn't justify in my own head how the tomato would burst like that and still be on the vine. So I tried again, this time with the tomato on the ground:

This version made more sense in my head and so here the finished 8" X 10" painting. I'm happy to say it's sold!

I also did another series of Ode (they're all around 2" x 3") for the festival. As far as I know, all of them but the bald one and the pigtails have sold:

(Mostly) Finished Paintings...

First off, a declaration: it's 11:44 p.m. and it's still hot. It's still humid. Who needs hell when you have summer in the South?

Now on to the paintings.

Here's Red, 7"x9" oil on birch:

I like the way this one turned out but...that hand! It gave me fits! I ended setting up a small mirror and holding a sketchpad to get the right position. Now that I look at it, I may have to tinker with the color a bit...or maybe I'll just leave it alone so I don't mess it up.

Music Box, 5"x8", oil on birch:

I really like the shape the dancer's body makes, although I will tinker with her face and arm a bit more. I just don't like that "daub" of a mouth and she's kind of muddy looking to me. Perhaps it needs a few more highlights too.

The Bee, 3.5"x4" (more or less), oil on birch:

This is one of those "end of the day" paintings I did just for myself. I found a dead carpenter bee on the walkway in front of the house and I had to immortalize it. I love my bee.

Now that I look at them together, I think it's pretty obvious when I paint from life and when I paint something purely from my head. The life (well, death) one is more painterly.

Paintings and whatnot

It's Tomato Art Fest time again! This year, it was a bit of a struggle to come up with ideas and when I did come up with one, I usually didn't know how in the world to carry it out. I had cityscapes hiding inside of tomatoes and whole universes leaking out of slices, complete with stars, planets and galaxies. Tomato shaped bubbles floating in the air (the background gave me fits on that one.) Hermit crabs and tomato shaped clouds.

Here's what I finally came up with:





















I call this one Medusa. The lady at the gallery said it reminded her of a children's book about a little yellow baby boa constrictor who didn't want to grow up because he didn't want to turn green. She told me the name of the book twice and my ears just didn't have their gloves on for some reason. I never did catch it.





















I finally called this one "Oh, Hello!" I worked on this one off and on for six weeks and the composition changed at least three times, maybe four. I felt I went out on a limb with this one because it has an actual background instead of what I usually do. I worked on this painting right up until two days before it was due at the gallery. Even the photos I took of it came out strange.

I told someone that I felt the same way about this painting as I imagine a parent may feel about a kid: you can't help but like them but you just know they're going to end up on the street, possibly in the wrong part of town.
















This is Ode to Wazowski. That's about it's real size. I tinkered with this painting after the festival last summer. It was a plain little thing, with its little tomato self. I picked it up again this year and immediately saw it looking out at the world.

And yes, it's that Wazowski.