What You Need Will Be Given To You

While I've been waiting for the smaller pieces to dry, I pull out two older human skulls and begin work on them.  I've not had any good ideas for them, until I got sick of the extreme 

tightness of the small skulls.  

(You can see the scale in the studio shot. )

I've called the big orange one "What You Need Will be Given to You".  I'm playing fast and loose with the colors, basing them roughly on Matisse's "Harmony in Red".  

Mine is not red and so far has very little harmony, but my God it is fun to slap bright colors around.   

blur and destroy

I add the decorative elements.  

This has to dry for about a week.

If I push the time, the subsequent glazes will 

blur and destroy the pattern.

there should be three

Scroll down to see all images, there should be three.

I'm painting in the design on "Born a Little Breech".

I selected a pattern that has birds and flowers in it, it occurs to me that if the skulls are stand-ins for life on earth, then the patterns are stand-ins for flesh.  They should represent life, not be a mere decorative element.

I put in the pattern and see that it is way too big.

I wipe it out and proceed slowly, noticing as I go how the pattern change the expression of the skull.  I am only a little bit in control of this, and have to trust that I won't waste all day on something that hurts the painting.  

Photos 2 and 3 show the progress- this is about 6 hours of work.

Painting this way does not come easy for me, I have to really dig deep and focus- I look for a deep lake inside myself.  

I switch from coffee to water.

Golden Boy becomes himself

This one is coming so easy.  I take a design I've saving for a couple of years,

draw it in and paint around it.  From there it's the blacks that are in the eye sockets, nose, mouth and background.  At this point it is important to keep the edges fuzzy, one thing that makes a representational painting sing is how the edges blend into the background.  It has to be a sort of lost and found thing, where they go from sharp to blended and back to sharp again.  

It's tricky.  I will glaze over them later-it's tough to unsharpen a hard line, but easy to create a sharp line.  Its all a set up for later.  

I think the design will be maroon.  

I like this design, it has the elements I was sketching in last week of bold shapes and spirals.  

I can't believe it's 3:30, when the painting is going well the time flies by.  

Born a little breech

I do more work on "Naming the Broken Things"

My wife looked at both paintings and commented only on "Golden Boy", confirming my impression that one is stronger than the other.  Following my instinct to build up the underdog, I concentrate on this, the weaker one.  

The painting is at the point where I feel like it exists already somewhere and is speaking to me about how it wants to be when it is born.  Because of the problems it is having I retitle it "Born a Little Breech".

The task is to understand WHAT IT IS.  I decide it is a real skull on a real table with pretend moons ringing round it like thoughts.  To make this idea material, I create a circle of light and cast shadows from the skull, with no cast shadows from the moon.  I put on headphones and 3 hours slip by.  The ring of light in the background is an artifact of the search for where the ring of light fades into the darkness.  It evokes the rings around Uranus, so I leave it for now.  I tweak the nose so it completes the circle of moons, thinking about halos.

The whole painting is looking too white, but this just means it is crying out for a design.  

Glazes begin to contain Damar Varnish, giving them depth and shine. It also attracts and traps dust, so I'll have to sand it down.  

I put it aside and turn to Golden Boy, which my wife thinks has a gold tooth.  

This was in the back of my mind, so I'm going with it.  

Golden Boy grows up

Painting in Golden Boy.  He is still the stronger of the two.  Not sure of the design to go on his surface.  

Beginning to fill in transition areas to opaques on Naming the Broken Things.  I am pretty much decided on this floral pattern at this point, but have to paint in the rest of the skull, then do the pattern on top.  The pattern I have drawn and painted on is to make sure the colors of the moons will work with the colors of the skull and design.  

Making these paintings at this mid-point feels like trying to control the movements of a large school of fish- you can do it, but it has a mind of it's own.