Portraits and Color

My last blog post had a couple of paintings I had done in college. They got me thinking about how I've essentially stopped painted after I graduated and have focused almost exclusively on illustrations. I don't have many paintings from those days, most of which I just abandoned or trashed, so I can't look back too much and examine what I was doing. I did find an old study I did of a room mate I had while in college. This was done on a small (about 8.5" x 11") piece of masonite, as was just a study for a larger painting I never got to finish. It's interesting to look at and wonder at what I'd have done had I gone to the actual painting. I loved pushing paint around on a surface, making it describe forms, and I can see that joy in this small piece really clearly. Takes me back...


Then, an old filmaker/photographer friend of mine came to visit from NY and we talked all night about projects we're both working on and ones we WISH we were working on. One of the subjects we touched on was how I need a headshot for the back of all those fancy pants books I make. The idea of posing for them makes me uncomfortable,...just makes me feel fucking vain and dirty. After he rolled back to NY, I began thinking about how much of my painting career was focused on portraits and how I did many self portraits during that time.

That made me starting thinking of my work now, and how most of it is in black and white. I think black and white works a different part of my brain then color work, but it still feels like I can push ink around like I used to push paint. I did this little ink study between pages.I'd like to get to work with more color this year, and that reminded me of this short style test I did a few months back. I wanted to see if I could do a fully fleshed image in under a half hour using rough inking and computer color. Not perfect, there are PLENTY of drawing and color problems with this, but it was an interesting exercise.

Think I got this done in under 20 minutes, not including scanning.

Anyway, no more rambling. Back to he grind.
Mike