Friday, April 29, 2011

Parisian Puppet Master Update after Saba Dive Trip





I absolutely have not had enough time to paint lately. Why does life get in the way???
We took a dive trip to SABA...a Dutch Carribean island for a week and I've been running since we got back. I'll post some pictures of the island. It was really wonderful. The island has the shortest runway in the WORLD!!! It's not for the faint of heart. When we left the island they had to chase the mountain goats off the runway. The island only inhabits 1500 people. They live like mountain goats also as everything is straight up or down. They have a rainforest and cloud forest. We hiked the cloud forest. 2.5 hours and my knees couldn't go down without pain by the time we got to the resort...I could go up...just not down.

The diving was awesome!!! All the coral reefs were alive and beaming with life. It was like diving in an aquarium. Saw a giant reef baracuda that looked like a shark. We saw areas where the sulfer was coming up from the underground valcanoe and we could put our hands in the sand and feel it's warmth.

Enough of the trip. Still trying to figure out how to make the painting look more contemporary...I decided I wanted strings attached to his hands...like he also is a puppet...someone is always pulling our strings....I still have not addressed the fence seriously..still working on the man and puppet...since they are the main focus...I don't know why it takes me so long to work on these things. Some people pop out paintings like theres no tomorrow....I envy that...but I can't. My paintings are painstakingly done. Sometimes they become a burn out for me. I put so much time in these things that I feel like I should charge a billion dollars for them....no one understands why paintings are so expensive...because of the TIME that goes into them!!!!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Stress Release



What do you do when you get all tense and tight from doing tense and tight paintings??? Let it Rip!!! That's what I do. Sometimes I want to NOT think...but just flow...fast, quickly and just enjoy being like a kid again...not worrying about how it's going to look. After I do this, I am ready to move forward on a planned ,tight piece.

This canvas was given to me by a friend that was moving. The canvas was warped and the canvas wasn't stretched properly and it had way too much slack on the stretchers....so I used it for my release piece.

I'm done with Reflections and had started The Puppeteer....yes, another controlled piece that has a LONG way to go.........(if my arm doesn't fall off first). The hazards of painting and over use of ones arm. What is NOT fun is the fence. I'll probably spend more time on that fence than anything else. It has to be just so correct or it'll be soooo noticable. Remember in drawing 101...when the professor let you pick something to draw... your shoe or a bottle, and the students thought drawing the bottle was so much easier...and then later realized that drawing the shoe was easy and the bottle...much harder....because it has to be just so right. WEll that's that crazy ornate fence! So when I get stressed on the fence, I'll take down my "release" canvas and slap some more paint on it....and just smile....like a kid....that's doing it for pure "JOY"!