Monday 15 December 2008

Art Monday: loosening up


Painting is still a learning process, or as I refer to it, a struggle. It's rare that I produce a piece I am 100% okay with. Going back and forth on the amount of realism I want to inject into my work is a part of the struggle. The small oil sketch above is a light in the tunnel for me, or perhaps a point-change mutation with beneficial traits being expressed, if you prefer.

This piece, Callimorphia dominula, was created for a colleague as a Secret Santa gift. (The recipient is extremely talented, and though I don't often refer to folks at my day-job, keeping the two worlds separate, you can see Ash's paintings here.) Since her name is Ash, I painted leaves from an ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior), and a Scarlet Tiger Moth - - or is it one of the faerie-like Meliae?

The mutation for me was in the attempt to create a thickly-painted -one might say slathered- background, and a realistic foreground.

The background here on the left is obscured, partly because I put the still-very-wet painting onto my scanner, and it left shadows of the sticky paint when it scanned. What you're missing there is largely off-white, with a hint of blue-green.

In the coming months, I hope to get a number of paintings developed, and this little sketch feels like I've uncovered a small but vital technique that breaks a block I've had for a while.


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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details.
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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is absolutely fabulous!
Lucky recipient, Ash!

Sean Craven said...

Ash's stuff looks very nice.

And this shows a lot of promise. Frankly, someone with a more minimalistic approach could easily claim it was a finished piece...

traumador said...

what type of scanner do you use that can scan wet paint and not have paint left on the glass? (not that i tried a similar thing with a photocopier once or anything...)

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks Leslie!

Thanks Sean! And I'll pass your comment on to Ash.

Glendon Mellow said...

Traumador, it's a magical scanner from happy land, made from gumdrops! (Ooops, I'm commenting and drinking cold medication at the same time.)

The glass totally gets wet paint stuck to it. That's what all those weird grey brushstrokes are on the left.

I wipe it down with a gentle cloth after. Quite a number of my paintings are tacky when I first scan them.

Anonymous said...

AS always, I love your artwork!! I'd love to get a scanner like that. Where can I find one?

Glendon Mellow said...

Any regular scanner should do it, Raptor.

And thanks!

Anonymous said...

nice post

Unknown said...

I like it, looks great. I'm also excited because I'm getting your calendar for christmas from my wife.

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks for the compliment! And for getting the calendar.

I've gotten positive feedback on the calendar so far, and I'm happy with RedBubble's prints.

Merry Christmas to Jess and yourself, Eric!

Unknown said...

Merry Christmas to you too!

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