February 2012 Catchall.

So. One month of 2012 is done already. Not exactly one of my better ones, though I'm slowly coming to accept that maybe January will always suck.

Anyhow, January's done, so February's a (minor) fresh start, right? Lots happening artwise, as is often the case. There's a whole raft of metalflake paintings that will hopefully be finished soon. Including a piece I called "For a Dancer" (after the Jackson Browne song of the same name):

What you're seeing here is a mockup, of course. I first envisioned this painting back in August after one of those life-changing late-night conversations. But when I mocked up the whole thing up tonight, I have to admit I was taken aback just a bit. This is a very personal piece, so it's gratifying to see the emotional impact it has.

Inspirational verse:

"I don't remember losing track of you,
You were always dancing in and out of view,
I must have thought you'd always be around."

Moving on to the next item on the agenda, I'm sharing this link from Franziska San Pedro's blog, entitled "How The Internet Can Change Your Life." Interesting reading.

And finally, I've posted a couple new t-shirt designs to my RedBubble store just in time for Valentine's Day:

Carry on, then.
Bret Taylor
Day 762/1000.

Five Hundred Days. Or, Halfway There.

Well, today was an auspicious occasion - my 500th consecutive day of drawing and/or painting. I worked on ten paintings today to mark the event.

Here's the scene early in the day, before the paint started to fly:

A bit more glazing, more Liquid Mirror and more black lava gel, and the metalflake paintings started to look more like this:

(Still a ways to go yet, of course. And I also laid the base coats for three more of these babies. They still look kinda boring at this point, though.)

Then I got to work on the hot pink metalflake triptych you might've seen recently - my tribute to bubblegum rock. Here's a rough idea of what it'll look like:

After that, I started the process of adding that linework to the actual painting. The middle panel of the three has just been applied:

Hoping to finish this one in the next couple days. By now the masking/painting process for these is fairly simple and uneventful.

And that was my 500th day. What'd you do today?