experimenting

I finally could relax last weekend after dropping off 8 paintings at Common Grounds. I couldn't stay longer to see the paintings hanging on the walls, but I may come by sometime to see how they look like, and also to take a look at the other artists' work. here's how they look framed - I did all the job:





if you live in the Lexington area, come by to check them out. they will be displayed up to September 12th.

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Serpentarium is one of the paintings I wanted to show, even being an experimental work and a little different from the other ones in technique and style. I did it quickly and freely, on a poor quality paper, just to see where I could go... and the result was a pleasant surprise.

I've been trying this technique for a while, without much success, but now I think I learned the tricks. it's a more intuitive technique, and actually quite simple. I make several washes using tree or four colors and let them intermingle, always controlling the shapes until they form something like an abstract painting. the washes are "bolder" than the ones I do in my usual underpaintings. in Serpentarium I placed the face without any previous study, rendering it with pencils, as I always do. the cool thing is that all the "chaos" produced by my underpaiting will show through the figure, and the effect is quite interesting. I then started to look around the figure's face, just like when you look for shapes in the clouds... the shapes formed by the abstracts looked to me like serpents surrounding her. next step was to enhance the shapes and create more abstratcs. voilà.

I got so excited that I decided to start two more experiments, this time using boards and doing a better planning. after making the abstracts, I photographed them and took to the Photoshop. then I started to study the composition placing the desired reference pictures on them. the combination pictures + background brought me ideas for the paintings almost instantly.

the first one is coming to life. first thing I saw in this background was a big skull at the center top. then I understood that it was time to work again in a concept I had recently created but had to abort because I found that the work was becoming a total crap. and there's The Veil coming again, in a style of background I've always longed for my works but could never achieve. it was delightful to see the figure kind of emerging from the background, being bit by bit shaped by the pencils. I'm loving it. hope everything goes well and I finally get set in this new phase of looser, freer style paintings.