What a difference a good night's sleep makes

A little progress

   I've been having a lot of fun with these clouds. It's probably as close as I get to working abstractly, and it is a nice change. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the way I painted the sky this time, but again, it is a nice thing to change up my habits once in a while. I'm working on getting a layering effect to add more depth. I'm thinking about letting some of the clouds overlap the skyline, but I'm not sure just yet. Sometimes, it looks to me like she is actually on water instead of in the air. I might have to put some birds in to help her out.
   I'd say this is almost half-way finished. Like the repairman said in Toy Story, "You can't rush art".

IF: War

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is War. While I have no images of war, I do have this one, an image of someone who is a warrior of sorts. It is a portrait based on the Guerrilla Girl, Julia Child. The Guerrilla Girls are artists and activists who fight for equality for women artists. You can read more about them here: https://www.guerrillagirls.com/#open

The title of the drawing is The Fitting Room, from 2009. Wow! 10 years ago!

This one is better

Torus: Freehand Guess in a Cube

This is my late night guess (with no actual observation). Tomorrow, I'll look at the model and see if I am close. I think I have to nail down the centers and the corners. Why are threes always so much harder than fours?

Torus: First Attempt

  This is my first attempt at drawing the torus knot. I don't know what I'm doing (is it obvious?) so I drew it freehand first, and then started to assign receding lines to three separate vanishing points. Now that I see it here, I think maybe a good next step would be to build a cube around it so I can plot the points on the vertical planes and well as the horizontal ones. I also see a little wobble in some of the lines, too. 

    Hmm...since the Rubik's' Cube is divided in threes, I wonder if those divisions of the cube would be helpful here?

   

Gold Leaf the Easy Way

     I'm not sure exactly what this paper is, but it was a beautiful and recent gift from my friend Kathy when I told her I was thinking about tackling gold leaf again. I love the rich look of the old gold leaf panel paintings, but I wasn't looking forward to to sanding the bole. I have a terrible time getting a smooth surface with it. Kathy very kindly offered this paper to me to try. I think it may be some sort of illumination paper. This is my practice sheet. I already mucked it up, because I didn't transfer the figure properly. But so far, the paper is accepting the paint and taking layers. I think it might work!

    This is the basis for the figure (that is missing) on the gold paper above. When I was at Wheatland (http://www.wheatlandmusic.org) a couple of years ago, there were many talented young buskers showing off their work. This is based on a little girl who had written her songs on a piece of paper and stood and sang them for anyone who would listen. How cool is that?

Ice Mountain

   Today's prompt for Illustration Friday is 'Mountain', so I thought I'd dust this one off and submit it for my contribution.

    This goes all the way back to my days as a beginning grad student. I was trying to use ancient Hindu goddesses to convey contemporary messages. 

   At the time, the Nestle Company had just plopped a factory down in a beautiful rural area near my home (razing a lovely stone house to make room for it). My area is gifted with clear sweet drinking water, which Nestle proceeded to pump out of the ground free of charge, bottle it in plastic and charge $1.25 a bottle as Ice Mountain water. It has been a hotly contested issue in my area, but so far, Nestle continues to profit while our water table suffers. This painting was mean to comment on that issue. Talk about beating the issue with a stick, right?

     Although this is not my favorite painting, I do like the little demon under her foot. One of these days, I might cut him out and fix him up (without the foot) so the painting can be about just him, instead.