New Artwork

La Maison Verte - Artwork 1

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I'm not certain this is completely finished yet, but it's close.

This piece is tentatively titled Every Side is North.  It is 3P Quick Cure Clay and acrylic on a 6x6" birch panel.

Puffin Painting #1 - Byssal Bird

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And here's the finished first painting!  It's a conceptual, experimental piece - those are real Atlantic blue mussel shells (Mytilus edulis) adhered to the panel; I beachcombed some while I was in Iceland and was quite interested in their coloration and form and how I might use them to break the picture plane.  I wanted to explore ideas of illusionism, perspective, shaped or irregular canvases, cast shadows, organic versus architectural form language, and intertidal zone ecosystems.

I'm titling this painting Byssal Bird, and it's a mixed media piece with acrylic, watercolor, Atlantic blue mussel shells, and epoxy on a 16x12" basswood panel.

Byssal Bird.jpg

Puffin Painting #2 - Littoral Layers

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I'm almost done with the first puffin painting - the one I gave you a sneak peak of - but in the meantime I'm potentially done with the second; I've been adjusting it over the past couple days and I may go back into it again, but here's where it's at now.  If I do go back into it, it'll be for minor changes at this point.  I'm typically pretty bad about taking progress photos (particularly in taking well lit/consistent lighting source ones, so please excuse the slight lighting changes in the thumbnails) but I'm trying to make more of an effort to document my processes.  

I'm titling this one Littoral Layers.  The final piece is graphite, charcoal, and acrylic on a 16x20" basswood panel.  I typically do start with a line drawing (after preliminary sketching, of course), but then in paintings where I add to the natural support media for the background, I usually paint in the beginnings of a background before moving on to the foreground elements and then go back and forth until there's a resolution.  This painting was different in that I really developed the foreground elements before addressing the background, though after that I did my normal switching back and forth routine.

Littoral Layers.jpg

New Series Started - Puffin Paintings!

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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!

The Saga of My Most Recently Commissioned Amphiuma Painting

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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.

New Business Cards!

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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!

Nau Côclea Residency - Artwork #4

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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.

Nau Côclea Residency - Artwork #3

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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.

Nau Côclea Residency - Artwork #2

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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.

Nau Côclea Residency - Artwork

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cocleacasas

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...