Fire Breather

Fire Breather
Originally uploaded by SunToad

Here we have the first oil painting I've done in several years. I claim moving house, changing jobs, and just being too dammed lazy to muck about with any of it as my excuses.

Still, it felt nice to get back in the saddle.

Things I'm pleased with:

The snake / dragon - This was the first time I had tried painting an object without first having penciled something in. It was also my first attempt at really blending colors to create the shape, rather than 'drawing' lines with dark paint and then coloring inside them. I was also quite pleased with the color palette.

The fire - I'm very happy with the result I got as it was completely by accident. I started with a white base, thinking to do the fire in the style of the water in traditional Japanese tattoos. But I was really unhappy with that and so I scraped it off. As I did so, the white and colors blended and created the effect you can see behind the red lines.

The poem - I'm quite pleased with it. I wrote it on the spot, in pen, but while looking at the painting and then began working it in. I like the suggestion that the dragon is winding in between rows of text, but...

Things I would like to have done better:

The text - It is a lot sloppier than I wanted. Originally, there was no text at all but the canvas felt too empty with just the dragon and the fire, so I added the poem and it was better, but not great. Then I started adding lines and arcs to the shapes of the letters, then added the lines in between and around the letters and eventually got to a state I could live with.

The spaces - If you see the painting in person, it is distinctly two layers. There's the orange background, with the dragon, fire, text, and lines all sitting on top of it. I really wish I had had all the ideas formed so that they could all be present at the same level; given a chance, I'd fill in every space between all the elements so that the entire piece is at the same level.

All in all:

I'm pretty pleased. Most of it came together to look like the image I had in my head, which is always an effort. Also, I learned a ton by working on the snake / dragon. And, last, it was a lot of fun to get the paints out and get something down on canvas again for the first time in a long, long time.

What Else?

What Else?
Originally uploaded by SunToad

My friends offered a spot in their show to me and I had nothing new ready. In fact, I hadn't painted anything in about two years due to moves and marriage and jobs and the like. Still, I wanted to participate. So, inspired by the likes of this and this, I opted for my own minimalist design.

The whole thing is done in acrylics, and the hardest part was lining up the tape to get straight lines. It was fun, but it was a rush job and I didn't quite get the reaction I had been hoping for. (The biggest problem was that no one knew what a Saturn V was. When I explained, I got a lot of, "Oh, now I get it." Better than nothing I suppose.)

Anyway, I still like the idea of minimalism and I have a few more ideas, but I think they might be better expressed somehow other than as acrylic paintings.

Painted in Sept. 2009, acrylics on canvas.