Progress...

Ink drawing on monoprint in progress...

First, before I go any further, some huge, long overdue thanks go to my studio arts professor, Sandy (Alexander) McBride. I miss your classes very much, Sandy. Check out his beautiful paintings here.

Last night, while watching Part 2 of Any Human Heart, I began working in ballpoint on a monotype (a single ink impression on paper). Slowly, slowly, my bird man is taking shape.

The painting, below right, is actually on textured upholstery fabric that I stretched onto a painting frame. It still needs to be removed and stretched more tightly, but I can't find my staple gun, so I started to paint on it anyway. What's under the dioxizine purple and ultramarine blue beginnings of the sky? A gorgeous cadmium red. The gold will be the base of two peacocks. Just building up color, slowly, to create depth.
 
My parents are coming out to visit this week, and they are bringing with them four other paintings, one of which is the brother painting to "Hangman" and "Strung" (forgot what they look like? See them here).

Painting in progress: the gold segments will be peacocks;
the sky is just beginning to develop. Under the blue and purple
is cadmium red.


The final image here depicts that skeletal foot painting, which was originally part of the 'brother' painting that's coming from central-PA this week. Because my D.C. studio was pretty much wherever I could find space in my apartment, I sometimes did larger works as a series of canvases. Therefore, the foot and thigh bone of the 'brother' painting (I don't remember what I titled it) are what were originally on these canvases. I tried to turn them into something I could work with, some abstraction, but I now put a white glaze over each, so I can make another image emerge without losing the depth offered by the underlying shading.

Paintings in progress:
white glaze over original images