The Nice Thing About My Studio…
…is that while it’s 89 degrees outside it’s about 60 in the studio! Right on!
Now then, a few things are going on:
1. All this new experimentation has been fun, see below, but I feel like I’m just messing about in a sandbox making castles that won’t stand against the wind. The color shorts have been interesting but up to this point generally not satisfying.
Thus, today I’ve begun laying out work for the rest of the year. I want to have a show set up for next Spring and one set for the following Fall. I have more than enough stories for my 1st show which I hope produce a good 10-14 well-crafted pieces. However, the 2nd show is going to be, um, massive. I don’t have the text for it yet, I don’t even know what it’ll be about, but I’m a dork and I do have a vision and so it’s time to begin figuring out how to bring that vision to life.
2. Color experimentation continues. I’ve finished 6 pieces, maybe 7, and have put down 3-4 to work on later when I’m clearer about what I’m trying to get out of color. That said, let me show you what I’m doing:
This is one of the first panels in the stencil style that I produced, Yellow. Until yesterday it was a kind of fucked up white over 2 layers of standard black text. I’d taken to sanding down the letters, interesting effect, but just didn’t know what to do with the piece. So finally I threw my hands up in the air, painted most of it light blue, then went over that with turquoise and I dig it! It sort of reminds me of Jackson Pollock and while I want to call it 3 Poles, I ain’t gonna. But I am going to take a sander to it.
This is a Jimi diptych. I have no idea what I’m doing with diptychs; they just seemed like a good idea at the time. So I painted it light blue, same as above, then opened a jar of crimson and slapped it down. The left bit looks like a dragon’s head to me. I’m going to go over parts of the panel with a darker, richer red then again sand it back so the text begins to stand out. For that effect, check this out:
Mostly just pay attention to letter shape and how certain letters get filled in. Then look at the close up
and let me know if you think I should in fact sand the bastard down. The letters underneath are black.
Lastly, something for all you Bengals fans out there:
The undercoated orange over black text was the exact color-scheme of the Cincinnati Bengals. My sister is a massive Bengals fan and I just laughed at the combo. It looked like Halloween. However, top coating then more to come.
Open studio tk in July. See you then.
