I also had run out of masking tape and am nearly out of paper! Oh, dear. Yet my urge to paint spoke louder than my poverty -- I ended up cutting the two pages of watercolor paper into bits and stretched it using scotch tape! The paint bled in the corners where the clear tape wouldn't take, altogether creating some pleasant effects. Sometimes using so called "mistakes" can accentuate the finished image. So these are watercolor rough drafts. Will they ever be finished? No.
This painting is very blurry, drippy, blowsey, but I like it. It seems to be suggesting movement. The female figure is drifting or walking deliberately into mist. She is surrounded by faces -- or memories of faces -- watching her, looking away from her, kissing and looking straight at the viewer. I wasn't keen on adding the faces because it just seemed "tagged on" -- pasted -- but then, upon closer inspection, I realized the face at the lower left corner seemed to be my friend Rebekah and in the upper right hand corner the face looks a lot like Josh. Conclusion? I was subconsciously missing my friends, I think. Or their spirits just left an imprint on my painting that day. Who knows? The effect is there and I let it be.
You can tell it's getting closer to Halloween -- my favorite time of year -- when many of my painted images are coming out undead-looking! With this painting I used only the murky used water after I did the painting above. I also used a silver metallic watercolor pencil. I wasn't sure the effect of the silver was going to show up, but here it looks just swell. My favorite part of this painting is the little dribble of reddish-pink just off the lower lip, as if this ghost or zombie just got done having a midnight snack.
Which gets me thinking... Ever notice how often vampires in popular media (paintings, posters, games, etc.) are shown with blood dribbling off their lips and chins? I've never liked that look. I want to see (or create) more images of vamps who are neat eaters -- like they were smart enough to bring some wet naps or something -- because most of the time I'm pretty sure I'm looking at a vampire and don't need another artist to show me that a figure is a vampire by making their pretty faces blood smudged and smeared! *giggles* At other times I look at a painting of a vampire with a messy face and think they just got done eating some barbecue ribs!
Top hat man. Man in a hot top -- did I just type that? Yes, I did. Hot top. Might as well just say he's from Hot Topic! Jeez...
My friend Miya said: "I like him. I see him as a fey creature here to woo an unsuspecting female... He gives her love and and a muse's creativity in exchange for slowly absorbing her life. He's beautifully dark."
I really love her assessment of this painting and can't say anything better about it.
I miss doing art assignments like I did in college, it gave me a goal to work toward each week. I remember one assignment Rob Stolzer gave my class: draw and paint a series of big images in tiny space, then do a series of small images in a big space -- basically use the most of what little space you have to work with and don't over use the abundance of space you have. It's an interesting drawing experiment. I had the memory of that assignment in my mind when working on all three paintings here.
I like giving myself new things to do based on old idea. It's an ordinary challenge. A start that works me toward a goal. And yet I still feel I don't paint or draw enough. I've always got to do MORE.
Love them as always. :D
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