Monday, March 12, 2007

I'm still here

Sorry for the hiatus, there. First I was working on a Creative Capital Letter of Inquiry (thanks for the editorial assistance, You Know Who You Are), then I was taking stretcher bars apart, turning failed canvases over, re-stretching and re-priming them, scrubbing down and re-priming other failed canvases, and working on this one, which is in danger of being overworked and over-complex, but which can possibly still be saved.


Sometimes I wonder if I will ever reach a point in my career where I don't wreck most of my paintings halfway through, and then drag them back from disaster by scraping and re-thinking and trying twelve different things until something works. I keep thinking that someday, I will just put it down, and it will be perfect, and I'll put the next one down, and the next.

But then I'd just be working on autopilot, and it wouldn't be fun anymore.


Look what I discovered about the proportions of a scorpion, as relative to a circle with the focal point moved exactly half of the distance from the center to the edge:


Nifty, huh? I know that scorpions are more or less proportioned like this, because I spent several months while living in Mexico, drawing and painting the scorpions that lived in my house. I was also dating a Scorpio at the time, and it was going badly.

But that's probably too much information.

Yes, I know, it's too busy. It's also too wet to continue messing with, this evening; also the hues are too homogenous. But I SEE it in my head, I swear. It WILL be better in the morning.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure what you're working towards, but I like it - I think because of the combination of colours. I don't visit art galleries much since a lot of what I see there these days bores me. I'm hardly an art 'expert' so I run purely on instinct.

Chris C. said...

Jeez... Stormy.

I like the original figure. Very intriguing, especially positioned that way. But I'm partial to that kind of unadorned line work.

Curious to see what happens next.

Your discovery about scorpion proportions corroborates my own observations when finding one looking a bit desperate in a glass of water. It was completely vertical, its head down and its tail up, and it didn't seem to be able to do anything about the situation except drown. It was clear where its center of gravity was.

Anonymous said...

Am I a bad person because I like it colorful and vibrant?

I like it. Toning down the palette is purely optional, IMHO.

Anonymous said...

Ah. One step forward, two steps back. Break not thine forms into mince! From whence do these near-cloying serpentine lines come spring? Build thee a shining structure full of solidity and relation whereupon even the most offish amongst us can such pereceive?

Cheers,

Silas

Pretty Lady said...

The serpentine lines, Silas, are the WHOLE POINT. Sheesh. I knew I shouldn't have posted this mess.

Kesha Bruce said...

"Sometimes I wonder if I will ever reach a point in my career where I don't wreck most of my paintings halfway through..."

Please stop taking the words right out of my mouth.

Pretty Lady said...

Actually, Kesha, I DID wreck this one so completely that I took it off the bars, rolled it up, and stretched a new one. It was unsalvageable. A friend of mine still claims to want it, though, goodness knows why.