This was that small piece I started while trying to think of an unpleasant memory - and it might be all I have for AEDM 30 (nope - see below), though I had most of Saturday to paint. I didn't know how to hold a negative mood while painting. I'm not used to painting in that mood, at all.Today, though, after last night's horrific nightmare, I could do it. Black. That's the color I don't use much - I don't consider it to really be a color (more like all the colors together, or all the color removed...) and I don't see it a lot on earth except at night. I usually feel black is better simulated by a dark color, like Ultramarine, Prussian, or Cobalt Violet. Black was perfect. Pen, ink on a brush, and this house reared up with the light inside and the dark and violent oranges pressing in from the outside. I don't know that this means anything in particular, but I feel "outside looking in - excluded" feelings, and looming cold dark feelings.
Don't read too much into this. I'm a happy guy, mostly.
I think I can paint more like this during this season (winter, low daylight, holiday stress). Maybe that's where the bad stuff should go this winter - like The Picture of Dorian Gray, where all of his wickedness and old age went into the painting in the attic (while he remained beautiful and young), until it overtook him finally in his real life, and he destroyed the painting.
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Later this evening I started the layout for Glee 1. Again. I did Glee 2 months ago (a completely different adventure), but it was the second idea, hence the name. Glee 1 has been rolling around in my head for a long time, and trying unsuccessfully to get on paper, but I hadn't felt up to tackling the composition. This is a good start, for what I needed. More drawing to do tomorrow - got to finish the top half and figure out the lighting.
10 comments:
I admit - I like the house. Dark but the color comes through - life to me.
welcome to the finish line! It has been a great pleasure meeting you through AEM and I promise to keep coming back - yes, I want to see glee and if it has any fish. =] Thanks for sharing your amazing work with us!
steve, I saw the house and immediately was overtaken with the intense violence of the piece... I realize I am the watcher but...
perhaps not...
then glee 1...my first reaction was around how different it was from everything else I have seen you do, as is the house, but I am sure I have not seen everything you have ever painted..so I have to process it and talk more...see what comes up with what has ALREADY emerged from this viewing! I am blown away by the emotions in that house painting, pure and simple...I hope you have not needed stitches!
Hi,
Absolutely wild and explosive! ‘What dreams may come,’ huh?
As artist, it’s interesting our perception of ‘black’. I can remember in college taking courses where the instructor demanded we paint without using black. Oddly, working in television for so many years a black screen as my starting plane became as natural to me as a white canvas.
I actually have no qualms about using it today in my work. It really makes the other colors pop and adds so much depth. But I have to say I love the vibrant and rich pastels and solid color that are so inherit in your other works.
Vikki
Sorry, let me try that again, this time with a working link.
Black can be quite amazing as a color, like this painting by Kazuya Akimoto, Black Owl.
MathMan showed this to me first thing this morning. Now I'm looking at it again and I see something entirely different.
It's a powerful piece. Definitely different from anything else I've seen you do.
The color combinations remind me of Picasso maybe? Miro?
MathMan - Thanks. I've noticed that you do see the dark - but also the color, for sure.
Tammy Vitale - I am preparing a bookmark folder of the folks I met on AEDM, so I can keep up after we stop using Mr. Linky... And thanks for the advice and encouragement. It's gone a long way stretching me this month.
Linda - Thanks so much - I am really enjoying painting all different ways this month. The house was cathartic to paint, but it was more of a release and help than an explosion. I will definitely be painting other emotions. Glee 1 has come a long way today - lots of drawing needed in this one, due to the architecture... You'll see tomorrow.
Redchair (Vikki) - Thanks! This was interesting. I've used black for lines, but not often as a color, because I usually try to see darks and shadows as colors (other than black). But I intend to use it more.
Thalia Took - Thanks for posting that link to Black Owl. An intense and confident use of black. I'll be curious to see what happens next, after this experience and seeing things like your link and a night garden painting I found online last night.
DCup - Either painter used limited, strong colors. They were definitely not afraid of black and red! I will have to see how else they show up in my work as I move forward. But color is still my first artistic love.
The combination of colors in the "house" painting, as well as the angles are different from the other paintings by you I've seen posted. In contrast to the flowing, soothing lines and pastel colors of most of you other creations, I'd say this communicates a very different feeling. To me. I don't see it as entirely nightmarish. The light suggests a way out of the bad dream.
Pagan - This was an interesting experience. I found that it washed my hands of the worst of the emotional fall out from the nightmare. If I'd known I could paint out the sharpest aspects of strong, unpleasant emotions, I would have started long ago. I showed this to my two oldest children a few minutes ago, and their eyes popped open, they were so surprised at this little painting coming from me. My son said, "That is a bad place." Yup. I have mixed feelings about that light from the door... is it beckoning me in and I'm better off outside? Or is it the warmth and fellowship from which I'm cut off? Both were aspects of the nightmare, which was all about taking sides, and the blood that is shed in a civil war.
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