How to skin a Dragon

  So here we are so far after quite a few hours of work.  Old cut up bed sheets soaked in glue and applied to the body and wings, and our dragon is starting to take shape.  Super Sculpty was used to make the eyeballs.  One dragon head is wrapped.. Tomorrow I will post the dragon complete with cloth mache wrap.  (this part can really get tedious)

  Things are going to speed up a bit now, as I have just found out I am bound for the mainland next week, and this guy needs to be done......he's got a party to go to.

Now we are getting somewhere.

  After a nice "no work" weekend, our dragon is back under way.  The upper head has a new ridge line on his head and snout, along with some horns.  The lower head got a small snout horn.  I have added the claws to the raised foot, and outfitted the arm with some tendons and muscle bulges.  Also beefed up his chest just a little.  I hope to mimic the claws on the other 3 feet, in a way that makes them appear retracted, like a cats.  Just hinting at them via ridges in the tops of the feet.  After that, some eyes and nostrils and this creature will be ready for the cloth mache ala Dan the Monsterman!

JAWS

So here we are with 2 nice sets of (shhhhh..Dragon jaws), all equipped with teeth and tongues and a nice burnt blue paint job.    I have added a fuller belly, so he could eat more peasants, and changed the angles and elongated his necks, so the heads will reach out menacingly.  The necks have wires inside, so you just cut through the papier mache layer where you want to bend em, that way the papier mache won't crush.  Re position them as desired, and retape/remache and viola!
  I am hoping the papier mache goddess (aka my wife) brings me home a nice bag of flour today, as I am out.  Target's brand of flour is my personal fav.  Anyways, then we can add some heads, and ears....maybe horns, or spikes.... depends on how his heads shape up.   A pretty big project, huh?

Creature Feature

Started a new project today.  A special order piece.  Thought I might post step by step pix to document how I make a.....shall we call it a little beast for now.
  First off I just grab a big stack of newspapers and start wadding them up till I get a body mass the size I want.  This one is going to be lean and mean,  at least for today.  Tape him up pretty good, so he can't get away.  Add a tail, and some hips on the back end, and maybe a neck or 2 on the front, and tape all that up nice and tight.  Right now I just have a general idea of what I want and where this guy is going.  I'll tape up some more legs and heads too, then take them all down to the lab for the 1st layer of paper mache.

I thought I saw a.......painting

Its funny how you have one thing in mind when you start a canvas and something else shows up when you are done. I wanted to paint a pretty golden haired girl, just to paint something pretty. In my mind I saw it as a stained glass look, and this is what I finished up with. "Sister Golden Hair" 18 x 24.

So the question is.........was I not good enough to paint the image I saw in my head, or is this what I was really supposed to paint?? After all........I did it!

Later

That's just the way it is!

This little 12 x 16 is called "That's just the way it is". Kinda makes me want to quick reach out and grab the plate before all the peas spill off. I like the optical distortion........it just happens by itself, and I really find that this piece says everything and more that I set out for it to say.

Later....................

A different perspective

I have always liked the way Expressionists can aesthetically distort spaces to make them add to a piece. I was looking to achieve that here in this piece called "Working Without a Net" 16 x 20. I also wanted to engage the viewer in the question.......Will she make it? Its a long way down...........all symbolic of the way I am painting lately......no net, just start attacking the canvas with an idea. I know its a long way down, but does anyone get this?? Or am I just tilting at windmills?

Later............

This is a Test

This piece is called "Homeward Bound" 16 x 20, and its quite a bit different than most of my work, in that I was really trying to tell a story with it. Now maybe I just don't know how to tell a story, or maybe its one people don't want to hear..........but so far no one really gets it.

To anyone out there........What do you get from it??

Bueller....Bueller....Anybody?

Who's in (under) there?

What to paint? Who doesn't ask themselves that question when you need a fresh start. A new series seems in order, as I just counted about 20 paintings in my last series. Without the motivation of a bunch of sales, that is about my limit for one subject. So again, the age old question......what to paint??????????? What will sell? What do I find interesting enough to keep me motivated to do a thorough series? What will accomplish both goals?
I find if I try to paint for "sales only" without the emotional connection to my subject, it shows in the work. And a lot of times if I paint something emotional moving, it is too "far out" for people to understand. So instead of trying to figure it all out, I just painted a clown. The cool thing about clowns is that their make-up may convey one emotion, while the person under the make-up may be feeling something totally different. So.....the cool thing about clowns as a subject is that you can try to get the emotion of the clown (painter) to show through the actual made up emotion his make-up conveys.
Well...........this one is called "Benny" 14" x 18". Can you see far enough under Benny's make-up to know what I was feeling when I painted him? And how many people on this planet today wear their "make-up" everyday to keep the rest of the world from really knowing what they're feeling? A planet full of clowns.............would have thought? later.

Tribute to Sherman's Deli

Last year when we vacationed in Palm Springs, we spent a lot of mornings eating breakfast in a place called Sherman's Deli. Pancakes were always my favorite! Those pancake breakfasts inspired this piece called "Breakfast, The Sunday Edition" 14 x 18. You can't get food like this here in Hawaii....where the joke is........."Best food I had in Hawaii was on the airplane coming over". Unless of course you like spam! (the stuff in the blue can, not the email kind) Later.

The Darker Side of Blue

I'm a big fan of Chuck Connelly.....how alive his work looks, and how you can see the sadness in a lot of them. How interesting his self portraits are and the view that he has of himself. Its his point of view that really speaks to me. There are days I can feel those same things when I paint. Usually those works are the best artistically, but are a bit too personal to interest or engage anyone else.
"The Blue Clown (My Life)" 14 x 18 is one of these. What more can I say?

A (not so) simple slice of pie

A simple little piece of pie titled "Lemon Meringue" 10 x 12, but what a monumental effort. I had this idea of an all yellow painting first, but as I progressed it just wasn't happening. So add a little pink......better, more yellow, and a tiny bit of green. Its improving, but not really taking off. And it never really did. After I was done, I cropped the panel down, and phew..........its done. There is just enough awkwardness in the piece to give it some charm, but what an effort, and what a LOT of paint. The next one has got to be easier!

It seemed like the thing to do

Got up this morning and painted this banana. I kind of wanted to see how simple a subject I could make look interesting, plus I wanted to paint with yellow and blue. I'm kind of liking it. The color really sings, and that's what this one is all about. Maybe I should paint a really big banana!! A four footer! Hmmmmmmm.... I wonder. :)

Days gone by

I'm not quite old enough to have ever really experienced a "soda shop", but I can relate to days gone by. I remember learning to paint back in my first studio, way back in Rochester, NY. How exciting it was to have my own separate space in an artist community, and to be creating these wonderful pieces of art that were going to take the world by storm. How I sold my 1st painting at the Clothesline Art Festival. All the "Coffee Shop" shows when we moved San Francisco. Boy I was going somewhere. But then like the soda shops, it just kind of slowly of went away. And I ask sometimes, "where did it go?" "What happened?" And once in a while I think.......I can still do it! Just like I thought I could smell the Black Cherry when I clear coated this piece. Black Cherry Soda.......12 x 16

I Scream.........We ALL Scream (I hope)

How fun is this? I've been looking for a new subject and something clicked banana split into mind. I don't know if it was a TV show or just the fact that I really wanted some ice cream, but it seemed "different". So I had an expendable board here in the studio, and away I went. I really built up the paint thickness to the point where I can almost taste the sweetness, just looking at it.
Another thing that pleases me with this piece which I call "Banana Split" is that I'm starting to develop a "style" and a wham factor that makes you want to reach out and touch the piece. Wonder whats on the menu for tomorrow? j

I miss my wife

I wanted to post my most recent piece here today, but I left my camera at a neighbors up the street. So anyways...........I like sunflowers, and sunshine. When I set out to paint this 14" x 18" last week, I wanted nice happy yellows and blues. I call it "Happiness". And it did make me happy for a bit.........
I need something new to work on, and all the doors seem closed. And as I wander around in the dark, off to the left something finds me. If I can remember to bring my camera home.......tomorrow we'll all have Ice Cream!!.

Where do I start (again)

This is the last bigger piece I finished before a 10 day "real work" hiatus. It's pretty hard for me to get back in the studio and resume production after a layoff..........which is funny because when I am away and can't paint I have all these wonderful ideas of what I will do when I get home. Its hard to get the "positive" energy flowing. Sometimes a total change in subject will do it, but I really have to push myself into the studio and in front of the easel.
Well before the day is over I will run out of "one more things" to do and will get out the paint. Again I feel I should be saying more than I am with my work. later

What I am not

I have discovered that I really don't care to paint outside(so much for plein air). Here in Hawaii, it is always windy and the vog covers the sun by noon for the rest of the day. No shadows, no highlights, just monotone. So I tried a floral........and another, and another. Some 80 or so florals later, I actually feel I have something a little new and different to offer, instead of the multitude of tourist Hawaiianna that perpetuates Hawaii art. We shall see. j

Its hard to be simple

I'm finding that its a little difficult simplifying my subject matter. I'm looking for a loose, colorful painting, but I'm having a hard time simplifying my subjects. Case in point with this painting.........I kept trying to paint all the rocks in my rock garden. This is something I need to work on.

The Electronic Age

Re-doing my website the last few days. It gets out of date so fast, and takes a lot of time to keep current. I'm about half done now, and hope to finish it up by the end of the week. The new version will be more compact, and easier to navigate, and display a lot more art.
One question I always ponder is wether I should put retail prices up on the site for the purchase of my work. Do people get more interested after they know the price, or before? I have an email contact link on my site but have never gotten an inquiry...............so I guess posting prices wouldn't scare anybody off would it?
Come May I am going to start contacting print maketers, to see if they might be any interest in publishing my work. The business end sure eats up my time, and I'm not really pushing on it as hard as I should.
Painted another beach scene this weekend..........the whole series will be posted on the "new" site soon.............keep watching. Later