Colour and Texture.

Working, as I may have previously mentioned, on another series of metalflake paintings. Today there was big progress on 15 of them.

A few highlights of the day:

What'd you do today?

Two More New Ones.

Eighteen.

Howdy. Another numerical post title tonight - eighteen being the number of paintings that'll be in my next show.

Past few days have been extremely productive. Creativity is bursting at the seams again. Lots of painting, a bit of drawing, lots of design. All of the metalflake paintings are well underway now - the final four are in the glazing process. That should be finished soon, and then it'll be clearcoat time again.

The glazing process is probably my favourite part of the whole sequence now. So much fun playing with vibrant colour, and it's probably the least labour-intensive step, too. It's funny - my first attempt at glazing was only four years ago, and at the time I thought I did a bang-up job. Other painters who saw the piece were generous with their praise, too. And the painting was garbage. Just horrible. I didn't even know how to hold a brush properly for glazing at that point. Plus I kinda skimped on the drawing part of the process 'cause I was so geared up to start painting.

Anyhow, glazing and I are old friends now. I think it was reading about how and why glazing was done in the Renaissance era that made it all come together for me - essentially, the pigments they had were so primitive, they'd do a yellow glaze and then a blue glaze on top to create green (for example). In some ways that seems needlessly complicated in the modern era, but similar practices do add a lot more vibrancy and chroma to colour.

Meanwhile, I thrashed out the designs for seven more of these paintings today:

And last night I whipped up a list of what design will go on which painting:

Everything's coming along nicely, now. I should soon be able to predict a completion date.

Good times, good times...

Dawn Patrol Slideshow.

So in case you're wondering, January was all about the Dawn Patrol triptych. All the base colour work and glazing are done now; the next step will be building up coats of clear.

For you process junkies, this slideshow shows a bunch of macro texture shots:



Thanks.

A Brief Teaser.

I've probably mentioned this before, but my good friends in Mojave (check out their music; it's pretty great) are putting on an art-and-music show at the Tipper in a couple weeks, and yours truly will have three pieces in it.

Here's a quick teaser:



Just a small detail from one of the paintings; they're all tied together thematically. So far the best part of this has been giving Tri-Art's new Liquid Mirror paint a test-drive. The stuff's amazing.

I'll keep you posted on how well the show goes.

Four New Paintings.

Well, this is a big day. The Christmas paintings are all done - at least, all the ones that have to be mailed to the East Coast. And of course, I uploaded the files for the book to Blurb the other night, so now I'm just waiting for the first copy to be printed and shipped to me.

Kind of a weird feeling - every project from the last few months is finished. Not really sure where to go from here, just yet. A couple days' downtime might be helpful, though.

Texture, Texture, Texture.

Just a quick hit-and-run post today - all hell is breaking loose, so I've barely got time to show you folks these macros from two of the most recent paintings. Lots of fun with acrylic mediums*: fiber paste, ceramic stucco texture gel, glass bead gel, crackle medium, extra coarse nepheline gel, matte medium, clear tar gel, extra heavy gel, and pouring medium.

Enjoy.


*Yes, I have it on good authority that in this particular case, "mediums" is the correct plural form.