Pop.

I tried painting while sitting on my yoga ball today. It took me a few hours to balance perfectly enough that i could paint detail. As I was uploading this photo my cat came in, looked up at me, and then dug his claws in. My computer hit my nose as the ball exploded and I crashed to the floor. Helo is now sitting in the doorway-- he looked remorseful and frightened for about 10 seconds, and now he's back to smug.

Anyway, here's the progress. I literally went back to the drawing board today and redrew a lot of the lines that create the facial boundaries.. They just weren't quite right.

Zombie Love-WIP

I started this painting early last summer after a particularly inspiring night at Zombie Prom. For those of you unfamiliar, it is an annual event in Portland where adults dress in Zombie attire and attend a formal dance. Last year the theme was "under the dead sea". There were many creative manifestations of shark attacks, dead sea life, drowning victims and a truly profane spongebob squarepants. Having spent most of my life as a theater dork, I got really into the make-up and fake wounds that I crafted out of liquid latex, fake blood and toilet paper. At the end of the evening I took a few pictures of my two friends removing each other's wounds....



Originally my plan was to make this rather abstract-so that the people would be unrecognizable. I planned to use grotesque colors and thick brush strokes. I wasn't happy with it so I kept painting over it--and soon my perfectionist nature took over. Now it's five months later (about 40 hours of painting) and I am probably about 50-75% of the way done. I have been taking photos after each 2-4 hour session. Here are three: the first is about 20 hours in, the second was taken yesterday, and the third is where it is right now.


It's really slow going at this stage, there's a lot of staring at it from across the room, then making three brush strokes. But when you paint people you know, it drives you nuts until it looks just right. These photos were taken with my laptop, so they are a mirror image of the painting.

The epic fable of stress intoxication

Once upon a time there were two friends who got really wasted after a huge, stressful exam and brawled on the lawn at a school sponsored party. This painting can be flipped depending on your mood--and can be reversed as readily as the affections of drunk women.

K is for Kangaroo Rat

It's mostly because I love their kidneys. They can concentrate urine down to a powder!!

WOP and FO

I **FINALLY** finished the Alpaca, and am thoroughly energized to continue with the alphabet series. Today I began the next two in the series, the kangaroo rat and the urchin. Also, here is my first lily of the year. Its a couple hours away from being finished.

Modified Group Painting

A couple of friends and I did this painting in shifts--I wasn't happy with the painting after three passes, so I did another one. (I did layers two and four.) A little off my usual style, but I am pleased with it. I was contemplating adding something to the foreground, but I didn't want to ruin the crisp simplicity. Thoughts?

And now for something completely different

My friend Jeff brought me a book on tibetan painting, which he purchased while traveling in Nepal. It described all the techniques required to paint in this style, and had many templates for backgrounds and foregrounds. After months of gazing longingly at the book and planning my first piece, I finally settled down to it yesterday.
The book advised starting with a simple seated buddha--and I picked my favorite background elements, throne and halo design and started tracing/drawing. I made things a little harder on myself by putting it on such a small medium (8x8"), it meant that I couldn't paint black lines but had to ink them. This is what it looked like at about 5pm yesterday:This is just ink on wood. As of 11:30 Today, I have painted the throne, landscape and halo, and re-inked most of it. I am about to start on the Buddha.