Pancho Villa Show

So, I already know I'm going to have to scrub them all down afterwords. But, I got one piece of complementary email to date, so yeah. Good exposure and people are actually looking. Also, when I went back to hang up my cards, I had a burrito. I really love burritos.

Crucifixion Photo Op

Holy Crap, did josh finish a sculpture? Kinda. I was sick as a really sick dog and wanted to hang out with Geoff, so he was nice and did appx 90% of the work. All I need is 99 more people who will work for me for free and I will reach my goal. I bought him dinner, for what its worth. Don't judge me, he liked helping. Viewable for several more days through the window of Sub-Mission Arts on mission and 18th. I showed up the friday night after opening and it was locked up at 9pm.

Did you miss me?

So I've been wholly absent from art for a few months now, mostly working and being lazy. The art news is a show coming up at Pancho Villa, for which I'm making all new paintings! Here are two, the color balance doesn't show up well, no gradient, but you'll get it. right?

I've taken a new direction on painting, well, maybe not new, but more extreme than before. I feel like art as a practice should fulfill the following traits (and this list will grow as I get more crotchety)

1. Look Good
2. Enjoy Making it (not every moment, but overall)
3. Enjoy living with it (most likely you will see it more than anyone else.)
4. Special enough for you to love, broad enough that others can be touched as well. Like Clifford Still, when I see his paintings, I feel nothing and I've never met someone else who has. Be it nostalgia, lust, fear, sadness, etc. Its art and its about life, show something!
5. Nothing wrong with subtlety

6. Nothing wrong with happy colors

Day 28 - Squares

So I'm going to comment on all four tined paintings at once. I say this once in a really well done few pieces someone did a few years back. I liked their material uses ideas, but not their technique, the guy did dome harshly and poorly cut out stencils for background material, so on ones that needed finesse there was none, some a few were great and some were bad. So I decided to try and figure out some ground rules for tinting and here it is.

1. Background should be darker than 40% but lighter than 75%

2. Grey is easiest to get a clear message through, but other colors DO come through well

3. Yellow tint works best.

4. Don't use any paint that has any white in it, it cannot get thinned out without clouding.

5. Background must be high contrast, period.

6. The closer to flourescent or high-intensity, the better the based paint for the tint works.

7. Small pieces make it hard to create the different areas of interest, so next time, bigger.

Day 27 - Rectangly

Day 26 - Stripey Paper

Day 25- Molly w/ Tint

Day 24 - Blue Girl

Did a second one, made the backgorund a unique clor and changed the feel by using almost exclusively cool colors. I really enjoy this piece, especially because it is a Lichtenstein with not dots!

Day 23 - Marilyn Simmons

Thrilled with this. Notice the Gene Simmons eyes are centered and Marilyn is off center. Lips individually painted, but rest of her head isn't,well, I thought it would look better and kinda make them look like they're being shared with Gene too--and it looks pretty awesome honestly.

Day 22

This one is bigger and more subtle than it looks. Based on Lichtenstein, but not dots, alas, but wallpaper. Tired. Look closer, the yellow is two tone.

Day 21

Re-using this image. I guess I'm re-enforcing the idea that a varied background doesn't work for an image that you want to come through undistorted, like your fiancee's face. The darker areas distort her face a bit and make this more of an abstraction than is necessary. I love the graphic-ness of this image and that one wisp of hair seals it. I am learning a lot in my painting days here. The funny thing is that I never really thought I would be a painter, but it really does seem to fit the more I try it out.

Day 20

wtf, right? Again, one of these that was just sitting around for a while, staring at me. After I finished the Molly painting the other day, I kinda felt like the background was almost so strong that it was fighting with the foreground, so I figure lets give this pattern a chance as a foreground on a pretty intense background that just didn't win me over at first, but I like this one a lot. Kinda one of those overphotoshopped things that you see online all the time, but the background is 100% organic and the foreground is playfully switching it up here and there--so not too rigid.

Day 19

This one is by no means new. It has been sitting almost done fore weeks, but I could never feel good at it. This past week I've been doing multi-day pieces, so I've been fighting with this one and I am finally ready to say it is done. This piece has a lot of movement and and a really good feeling, but simply is just too schizophrenic for my taste. But overall, pretty solid.

Day 18

So, this is a bit of a departure. Per Josh, foreground first: A beautiful Molly picture, but much less confrontational than I usually lean. Also, this is my first dot painting where there is absolutely no major distortions, my lines are even. The background is just pretty. Painstakingly pretty. Molly says this might be her favorite to date.

Day 17

This wasn't quite as poignant as I'd hoped, but it still cracks me up. I like making abstract and absurd the banal and comfortable. For once I double layered the white where necessary and for my enjoyment left the background a bit on the messy side, but I like things to feel a bit painterly.

Day 16

So, I think this one ended up a bit fugly, so I'm trying to think about another layer to add on it. Up close, it is really interesting, but overall just doesn't do much for me, but that's why I doing this 30 day thing, so I can be free to make a few duds. Or at least a background that I can get back to later.

Day 15 - halfway point

So, I was trying to make the background a bit more interesting, but clearly the value difference is too little and it is a bit hard to see whatsagoinon, so I'll be a bit more careful with this next time. If I would have swirled some yellow in there, it would have worked. I can't for the life of me find a heavy body yellow that is truly opaque. I originally planned on doing the foreground yellow, but it was just too uneven. Sad to say, but I think I might like the original more than the painting. Sad,

Day 14

So, this is simple, but not quite. The background is solid silver and the dots are black. This is the first time I have used an image without a high contrast ratio, so I significantly upped the ante on this one. I stuck with a recognizable subject ( a face because people naturally see faces everywhere says Walter Benjamin) and of course, one dear to my heart, Molly, not only is she people, but she's my favorite one. Each dot lovingly placed, tediously placed. So, the silver background is a reference to Warhol's silver paintings, as his homage to the silver screen from which he took so much of his source material, but the technique is only Warhol-esque in the sense that it is completely the antithesis to his technique--the technique is closer to Chuck Close who is all about painterly human qualities. So, to Chuck, enjoy, also, since you're rich, can I have some of your many many monies?

Day 13?

I've had a tough week, but I'll keep up from here on out. I dropped the yellow from the split. it works with the glasses, but I need the magenta and green glasses which I don't have. enjoy.

Stella!!!

Simple, Stella, with a little halftone in there as a throwback to my first dot painting, the 7 color Cody.