Still untitled piece..

Still trying to think of a title for this, but here is one of the two acrylic paintings (technically a mixed media piece) I've been working on this past week. There are a few corrections I intend to make to it (as I don't feel it's entirely successful yet), but otherwise this is what it looks like, as well as a close up. I really would like to do more pieces like this.. I think it's interesting that it's flat, but has a degree of depth to it. If you ever see it in person, it messes with your eyes just a little because each building comes forward.

Searching for pushpins..

Before I forget, I turned off the members only comments (sorry about that). You can now comment without the need of a blogger account. Today's work was mostly drawing, and one of the things I latched onto were these pushpins (note that the low res photos are a great deal darker than the images are in person). Somehow, in the process of drawing these, the answer to one of my questions came along and slapped me in the face. For the past year I've been cataloguing my work and wondering what it is about certain subjects I enjoy more than others. I know what subjects I don't especially enjoy, subjects pertaining to politics, or subjects that comment about the society we live in. For the most part I really don't care about either of those things. The world is what it is (irritating), so whatever. :P Other subjects I'll latch onto with a passion.. subjects that I select before I stop to consider why I'm drawn to them. Why do I HAVE to paint or draw this? Why? In Portrait of a Cat I depicted a playful subject with an underlying melancholy. The charcoal drawing "Roaming" was also a similar fascination, and so are these pushpins.. a playful subject that is also a bit threatening. I like that. I like for my work to be playful, and, perhaps, to also have a little bit of an edge to it. Almost like a fable that's told to entertain, but is also meant to be a warning. Or the hero in a book who is not all that good. For there to be light, there must be dark. I like that a lot; it's interesting and I'm inspired. I want to see what else I can find that's like that. Expect more work from me later this week.

Landscape

Some landscape trees for you. Not much else happening right now. Everything has been kind of blah this spring (possibly an indirect result of all the yucky weather we've had here in SF). I'm working on a couple of new pieces, but they've been rather slow in coming. One has been giving me some trouble, and the other one was just to test a new technique. I'll post one or both if/when I finish them.

Acrylic painting..

An acrylic painting I did.. painted straight onto an old acrylic palette. I like this because it reveals some of my process and my thinking. It's a continuation of some recent ideas I've had (similar to the abstracted apple from a previous post). But with this you get to see some of my tools IN the piece itself, as well as what I accomplished with them. And it's a nice compromise between realism and abstract.. which I very much enjoy.

Photography debate - Marilyn Minter

In the April issue of "Art News" magazine there is an article about how ethical it is that artists employ photography in the creation of their artwork. The article presents some of Marilyn Minter's work, among others, up for debate. The article then proceeds into the different ways artists employ photography, and how some artists simply use photos as a reference (their own photos), while others project their photo onto the canvas in order to trace the photograph and bypass many of the problems with drawing. Some of the photos in use by artists are photos that aren't even theirs. It's a pretty hot debate it seems. Personally, I don't like the idea of using photos that aren't my own, and if I were to use a projector, it would be to project a drawing onto the canvas and not a photo to trace from. I understand that a lot of photo realists use a projector in order to be as accurate as possible, and since photo realism isn't my interest at this moment, I don't employ the method. So I won't tell anyone they shouldn't do it. I don't especially like the idea of projecting, but I think it's ridiculous to say that an artist can't use photography at all in their work. As long as the photo you're using is your own, and you are the one working on the painting, what is the problem? If the photo isn't yours, or if your assistants are doing all the painting work, we can argue about copyrights and originality, but otherwise, what's debatable?