New Artwork
I've started a new series of paintings on the juvenile puffin, Toti, that I met at the tail end of my residency in Iceland in 2014. Toti was a puffling that failed to launch and imprinted on humans, so he is now a permanent resident at the Saeheimar Aquarium. I wanted to start on these pieces sooner, but better late than never.
Here's a sneak peak of progress on the first painting!
Recently, I was hired to do another commissioned painting of an amphiuma - an aquatic salamander with vestigial legs that looks like an otherworldly sea serpent or eel. My patron saw my first commissioned amphiuma painting done for Dr. John Pojman (it hangs in his office above his amphiuma Chrissy's aquarium) and wanted an original piece for herself.
The new amphiuma commission.
The previously commissioned portrait of John's amphiuma Chrissy.
Unfortunately, after mailing the new piece off to my customer and tracking it through delivery, there was radio silence. I worried that she didn't like the piece but also considered that she may have just been waiting to open it on a specific date (an upcoming birthday, for instance) so I made a mental note to send her an email in a week or two to check in. Before I could, she emailed me, and it transpired that the package was, in fact, not delivered (or possibly, not delivered properly and stolen off communal property).
Queue multiple weeks of back-and-forth with UPS, but finally the insurance paid out such that I had been paid to make the commission and my client received a refund on never having received the commission, so we were both made mostly whole again. Even though it's possible it's now lurking in a box in a UPS subbasement or was pawned for the value of the frame, I like to imagine the painting is hanging in a place of pride over a drug lord's couch somewhere. Since I do have the digital image, though, I can at least run off reproductions, so it's not completely lost to the world.
I just redesigned my business cards and ordered a new set from Moo. Since Moo allows printing of multiple back designs with a fixed front, I printed two different options. I was concerned that the one with the Balancing Act snails detail might be too much, as it can look it when you see both sides at once, but in person it works quite well. I'm liking both types enough that I may continue to order the mix... until I decide to redesign the card all over again, of course!
Here's the final painting I did while at the residency - I may well do more at home, but these five were completed while abroad. This one is acrylic and watercolor on aquabord and it's titled Darker Side.
This is acrylic on pastelbord which is a clay ground textured with marble dust granules. Due to the high heat here, most of the time the snails spend sealed inside their shells to conserve moisture, but on the summer solstice the rain brought several of them out and one explored my left thumb for quite some time.
Titling this one Balancing Act.
Here's an acrylic and watercolor on aquabord. This one is titled Spirit.
In the first donkey painting, I used acrylic for the donkeys and watercolor for the background/foreground atmosphere. In this piece, I used both acrylic and watercolor in the body of the donkey in order to achieve the various levels of opacity and translucency as well as watercolor for background/foreground layering.
So if you've been thinking I've been a bit slower production-wise on this residency, you're right - I've been experimenting in mixing acrylics and watercolors and also trying out some new support boards and there's been some trial and error in figuring out how to combine them all together, plus acrylics are a slower medium for me than watercolors. I think I'm onto something, though.
This is acrylic and watercolor on claybord. I'm titling it Perspective.
Here's the first painting I've been working on. I'm tentatively calling it completed, but I may revisit it as the residency progresses.
The paper is heavily textured with ridges and translucent stripes, and the snails are painted in acrylic. The working title is Côclea Casas.
There are donkey pieces in the works as well, but they're all still very early...
