The Migraine Tree Complete!

Well my entry for the Migraine Association painting competition is complete (see pic), my first finished painting in a long time. I'm currently finishing my entry for the regular Eclectic Art competition (which closes on Friday!). The hair was tricky, it's my first attempt at doing that in layers. I've decided to try a few experiments to try and work out the best way to do it in future. Next month I have to update Flatspace II, Radioactive and Taskforce and get some new sound effects finally released on IndieSFX.

Charcoal Grey

Charcoal grey is my newest colour. A grainy semi-transparent black with a blue tinge, this makes an excellent blue black or glazing, better than ivory black or the opaque warmness of mars black. I wonder how long it takes to dry. I'm currently overpainting my entry for the eclectic art portrait competition. The eyes need attention and should have been checked way earlier than now. The imagined mountains were a challenge but I've identified the problem as a lack of direction during their design. When I write music, I tend to summon the appropriate emotion or idea and then the music tends to write itself but with painting I've not done that consciously. If I had done this earlier, this would have avoided any ambiguity in the form of objects and an eidetic image of the end result would make the painting experience easier and the result more powerful. This particular composition was as laboured as the brushwork so it would have been the perfect answer. Ho hum, painting number 30-ish and another lesson learned.

Today

My van Gogh panel for Eclectic Art is complete in its first draft, and I'm now painting my entry for their portrait competition and fitting game stuff in-between. I'm making some music for Snake Club, a new free game from Hayden. I'd put the panel up but the blogger pics seem to be having trouble working tonight.

Crocodile Tears (of Laughter)

In which emotional state do you encounter crocodiles?
In denial.

This has to be the worst joke I've come up with in a long time.

Tuna Fishing

The strange ivy picture is now drying and waiting for it's first overpainting, I've no idea how that will come out and some parts vary in their blendedness in a strange way that I'm not sure about. Today I've painted my van Gogh panel for the Eclectic Art Starry Night Project. My original composition for the possible Bromley's picture has failed and needs attention in the tone area before resurrection. In non-painting news I need to announce Future Snooker to the world and get ready to update Flatspace II to v1.01. I've wrote desperately few songs this year but already one or two poems because of my painting fad. Here's one:

Tuna Fishing

Drama and contrast,
fire and pain.
The battle rages.

Hot red and ice.
Wrestlers entwined
in strangulation's constant grip.
A star-crossed ship.
A furies whip.

But here, in the war
intelligence emerges forth.
Blood bubbles,
the water's core.
Spears pierce,
Spanish fish twist.
Here is Dali.

Updates

I have now nearly finished the underpainting of my ivy picture which is acceptable in the modeling even if the appropriateness of the colours remains to be seen. I have much to learn in that area even if the Migraine picture came out fine. I have also completed the underpainting for a quick dash of a picture that is full of trees, and as a result I write for my own memory that cadmium yellow pale is the colour of happiness and that any sad colours, mixes that drown in their dark turgidity that all painters know and fear, are brightened and resurrected to a new form of life with cadmium yellow. There is a new competition announced on the Bromley's Art Supplies site that I may enter, that would be the 4th and last picture I was planning on painting before July. I have a design idea but the composition is uncertain and very complicated at the moment. I have traced the currently completed elements onto a few A4 sheets, scanned these and assembled them on the computer for easy experimentation.

Migraine Plans

In record time, on the 10th, I compiled the relevant materials, sketched and prepared the second version of the picture. The sky is now underpainted. It is an unusual picture to say the least, being set on the planet Mars. An ordinary conventional picture would be far too boring in this case. My latest complete picture is called The Migraine Tree. An image will be posted on my website when it is sufficiently dry.

Ups and Downs

It looks like my first attempt at a picture for the Jackson's competition is a failure. Painting is such a depressing occupation. Every lesson is a mistake and most mistakes take a awful lot of painstaking work to make. The work of making and preparing the transparent polystyrene surface was hard enough, then the composition ended up totally different to the one planned and the plant in question was both unknown and rather boring. The sketch took an unusual two days (and still wasn't special at the end of it). During the imprimatura the cloth rubbed thousands of little blue hairs all of the picture in a way that prevented their removal, and at the same time the sketch was rubbed away to near invisibility (a fault of the hard glassy surface). Finally, today the gradiented background comes out totally different from the one planned and it looks very weird. So after many wasted materials and days of work and planning, I'm (probably) going to abandon this mess and restart.

Future Snooker

Well, my latest game, Future Snooker has been announced and my painting for the Migraine Association competition is drying. It will be my first painting competition entry. I want to start on a new picture next week.