A full day of painting, the first day for a painting called Gynocratic Paedoparanoia. A somewhat odd title, it came to me at the moment of conception and I've stuck to the image and title, so I'll honour my unconscious and keep with it, though I think an alternative title would perhaps be better. It's amazing how a title can affect opinions and moods. I could call it Untitled #1, or Monolith on the Edge of Emotion or The Great Spectre or anything.
Here it is so far:
I liked the process and it's going well, partly because this is a colour scheme and type I am used to; a fleshy or rocky monolith in a stormy sky. I've prepared for it with the plasticine lighting guides. This wasn't stuck to much, only a little. Most of my reference images were faces, eyes, teeth, body parts and other paintings.
Storm in the Mountains by Hermann Herzog was one compositional inspiration:
A wonderful work, psychological in a Constable-ian sense, my style exactly.
All of my colours are earth shades, almost all iron oxides, with titanium white, of course, and titanium chromium yellow and tiny bits of nickel yellow for things like the teeth, and a bit of cobalt blue for the sky on the right. I've used quite a lot of the new Blockx Mars Yellow Orange which is lovely, a fades down really nicely. How desert-like the hues are.
There is a lot of detail here, far more than evident on the photo. I'm unsure if this will need a glaze, though the sky would benefit from some darkening for more dramatic contrast.
Painting involves long, slow work, and lots of time to think while it's happening; this is perhaps what makes it such a good artform. The painting process itself is zen-like, but also very physical, so it feels physically rewarding too. It is important that the artist is the painter because the zen-like process fosters the imagination. My mind is filled with artistic ideas and inspiration while painting which don't appear when not. I also realised a few things that take place uniquely to oil paint, such as using a colour here or there because there is some mixed or too much left, choices which ultimately unify and aid an artwork, but would not occur in, say, a digital artwork where any quantity of any colour were available.
