I am currently at the end of day two of the first layer to my latest painting, The Starcrossed Escape of the Psychological Cosmonaut. Look!
A lot has been done despite the fact that the picture is just over a metre in height and that the detail level is very high. Being a triangle helps here, but my working speed has improved this year. This is a complex work and the planning involving a detailed digital mockup has helped enormously. There are lots of separate elements that needed modelling, photographing and assembling; a clay model for the lower regions, a skull photograph (taken at Shrewsbury Museum), a computer model for the figure and the flying crucifix, a model butterfly made from tracing paper, some polyester-silk drapery (hung from my eternally useful microphone stand!), a distorted artificial landscape (bent into a semi circular pipe and lit!), sun and moon images courtesy of NASA, and finally lighting and photography of the female model.
This will complete two of my art goals for 2010; to paint something with a length over a metre, and to paint something using a professional model. I've missed most of my other goals, getting caught up in what I wanted or needed to do, instead of aiming at them! Even these two were more down to luck rather that aiming to complete them. I wonder how many other artists set art goals?
