Involved Backgrounds

I working on a series of 12 skeleton paintings, and currently have 6 of the 12 in various stages of background development. When I first started I thought these would have just a dark plain background, but as I looked at them, they seemed to need more elements to make an interesting background.

Several of them will have curtains in the background to provide color and compositional effect. Here is an example. The reds on this one turned out really nice. I've been looking at lots of pictures of theater curtains, and a friend of mine has red velvet curtains. I took some reference photos to get a better understanding of the color, flow of the fabric, and shadows.

I'm going to add elements such as cages, staircase, tiled floor, etc. to make the other paintings work compositionally.

Guns 'N Roses album

Axl Rose had purchased three of my paintings late last year, of which two pieces were to be included in a limited edition album release. To my knowledge, it was never widely released, though I received a copy from the band. I was looking at some stats for my website, and noticed a big spike in views and it appears that there is a big discussion among the GNR fans about the unreleased album, and in particular the images. Here is a link to a blog that discusses it, and they even included my painting "Lizard Part of my Brain."

http://chinese-democracy.blogspot.com/

I finally finished all the final drawings for the skeleton BDSM series and have started transferring these to panel.  

I got frustrated with one of them - I transferred the piece to panel, and realized on looking at it fresh again that the spanking horse was not in correct perspective.  It's probably going to be a struggle from beginning to end to get that one right - I was unable to locate an actual spanking horse at Mr. S so I had to use references on the net.  The horses in the reference photos were not in the exact positioning as the horse in my drawing, so I had to extrapolate.    I should be used to this by now, as I am always making these sorts of adjustments in my work.

Videography for Omnicircus Performance

I had the opportunity to videotape a performance of Omnicircus on Saturday night. Their founder/director is Frank Garvey, a multimedia artist who composes, designs art robots, and other multimedia visual arts (as well as performs electronic and acoustic music). Garvey asked me to video the whole performance. The piece, Thousand Faces Ball, was a macabre apocalyptic performance piece. The performance space itself is wonderful and interesting, with little light machines with brilliant colors, weird metal sculptures, and paintings by Garvey on the walls painted black.

Above are a couple of stills that I extracted from the video. I had a bit of a hard time navigating around with my ankle in a cast/boot, but I was able to get some interesting footage of the performance.

Doggie

Another drawing

Skeleton Dominaitrix

I'm settling into my new digs.  It is so pleasant at my new studio, it makes it easy to work there.  For now, I'm limited to drawing.  I sprained my ankle, so I can't paint (I do alot of pacing around and stand when I paint).  I'm working through all the preparatory drawings of the BDSM skeletons.  

Usable Studio

I sprained my ankle a week ago, just after I got all the boxes and furniture moved into the new studio.  I had slipped and fallen on the last step at our apartment building.  I ended up hobbling around on a swollen left ankle all day, and by the end of Saturday it hurt quite a bit.  It took all week to finish unpacking because I was so slow in getting around.

Finally, the studio is organized and usable.  Late yesterday, I got to sit down and actually do some art.  I worked a bit yesterday, and all day today, on detailed BDSM skeleton preparatory drawings.