Day 810: a Retrospective.

So here's a post that's long overdue. Back on March 25 (day 810 of the 1,000 Days Project), I woke up to find myself inspired. Hell, maybe even driven. I looked around at all the stuff I've been working on, in an attempt to prioritize. And as a means of self-promotion I decided to post in-progress photos online to document the whole day.

Since I'm planning a series of six ballerina paintings, I figured I should start working out the poses I want to use - the final lineart will be drawn from a live model, but I wanted to do my homework this time. So here are the sketches:

With that out of the way, I decided to turn my attention to an Avengers painting commissioned by a friend of mine. Once the masking was done, it struck me just how fortunate I was to have such a perfect venue for painting on a sunny day:

Then I started applying the linework. Instead of the white I always used to use on my metalflake pieces, I went with silver (Tri-Art Liquid Mirror), bronze and copper. It's only recently that I branched out from the white - the silver was also used on the "For a Dancer" painting, and the copper on the seahorse (AKA "Top Seekrit") piece.

Pretty soon all that remained to do was signing the Avengers piece:

And finally, the glorious results:

I have to admit, I'm really happy with how this one turned out, especially the metallics in the lineart.

Once that was finished I was still pretty psyched, so I decided to press on:

I really enjoy these large-format paintings. As I've mentioned more than once, the plan is to do a series of these pinup-girl paintings, if I can ever get the planets back in the same alignment again. Here's where I left off that night, after close to nine hours of painting:

And that was day 810. A whole slew of amazing people offered comments and helped me promote this mini-event, so I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them all:

Nicole Cruickshank, Andrea Waters, Cosca Restaurant, Ned Tobin, Geoff Gauthier, Trevor Ricketts, Ceci Graber, Wes Thompson, Natalie Jean, Bahaneh Grewal, Ron Cooper, Isabell Kinga Markus, Amanda West, Matty Sadorf, John Lee, Bob Cluness, Heather Prost, George Smeltzer, Candice Roach, Keith Perkins, Kelle Belle, Meghan Low, Lola Frost, Vincent Ng, Irving Lau, Todd Hancock and 99.3 CFOX, Opal, Annie Friesen, Melissa Hartfiel, Lorraine Murphy, Jessi Sensabaugh, Yvonne Milroy, Julie Frisina, Jim Dickson, Tina Power, Cathryn Smith, Margaux Wosk, Erika Wallace, Matt Algren, Kimberley Mulla, Jaime Purgavie, Wendy Pemberton, and Tess McCann.

(Plus Tequila Mockingbird, Nikki B, maryjane_77, the ruggler, Baw-nee and sparklehorss.)

Thank you, one and all. You're the reason I do this.

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.

Goodbye, 2011. And Hello, 2012.

Probably the final post of the year, so I thought I'd talk a little about 2012. As I've mentioned previously, I've been doing sketches for a show called "Closing Time" - a series of pinup girls against the backdrop of bars and other drinking establishments (two subjects near and dear to my own heart).

Well, just one beautiful pinup girl, to be honest.

Anyhow, I procured a 36x36-inch canvas from the good people at Opus Art Supplies today, brought it home, scratched my chin, and thought about what I could do with such a canvas:

Of course the answer was obvious: I could plunge into the Closing Times series. Now, I've been giving these a lot of thought lately - figuring out how I might render them, whether or not I should incorporate some texture, etc. etc. (I must admit, the subject of these hypothetical paintings has been strolling through my subconscious on a regular basis, too.)

Anyhow, after some deliberation I figured out the approach I want to take with this series, and shockingly, it's a much simpler, more minimalist route than the one I take with the Metalflake paintings.

So, you've seen various iterations of this already, but a number of tweaks have been made to this design since:

(And keep in mind, of course, that this is just a mockup, not the actual painting.)

All that being said, I will be applying the first blue washes to this piece tomorrow, and we'll see where things go from there. And if you want to see where I go with this one, Loyal Reader...

... well, you'll just have to wait and see.