Flaming ArtistAs I begin doing better, or
more ambitious paintings, the nature of the paper becomes somewhat
constraining. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the paper in the American
Express Date Book is pretty thin, lacking in body, and has a weird quality of
being initially repellant to paint, then becomes too porous. Oh well.
It is
done in watercolor.
I rather like this painting. It is an agreeable
combination of abstract and descriptive. I like the gestural quality of the
paint, as well as the colors. It is done in watercolor.
These drawings were influenced by the 2007 movie,
“Superbad”, specifically the penis drawings drawn by David Goldberg, attributed
to Seth the character portrayed by Jonah Hill. I wanted to affect a child-like
look. These are drawn with ball point pens.
This drawing was influenced
by the 2007 movie, “Superbad”, specifically the penis drawings drawn by David
Goldberg, attributed to Seth the character portrayed by Jonah Hill. I wanted to
affect a child-like look. I riffed on the “Superbad” aesthetic for the next
several days in the “Daily Dick” sketchbook; stay tuned.
I will probably revisit this
kind of drawing in the near future; it is fertile ground for exploration.
The cut-paper play continues
in its latest iteration This time I glued down the left-over sheet onto the
folio-right page, used it as a stencil to cut a frisket into that page. I
turned the page to the calendar week of May 13 through 19. and used the folio-left
page frisket to paint onto the folio left page of the previous week, probably
in acrylic, left over from a painting I was working on at the time,
Next, with great care, I
glued down the penis/testicle combo shape I had just cut out of the May 9th
through May 12 folio-right page onto the May 16 through May 19 folio-right
page. One has to look carefully to notice.
Actually, this reminds me of
a form of drawing I got into for a while: using a semi-pointed, hard stylus
with no ink or graphite or anything else in it and, basically, embossing the
paper. And that’s it. I did
several interesting drawings that way before I lost interest. I don’t know if
any of them are in this book.
Today I continue playing with the penis/testicle
cut-paper combo I created for the pages I posted yesterday. This one, I drew
into with colored pencil. Is this an African American penis, as opposed to an
Asian penis? You decide.
For today, and the next few
days, I’ll be working in cut paper. I started with the simple shape of the
penis/testicle combination. I cut out several copies of the same shape all at
one time, then glued them down on various pages in varies way, using the leftover
sheets as stencils, gluing THEM down as well.
In
today’s image, I let myself be inspired by the close-up photograph of the coral
reefs in the US Virgin Islands. Combining the penis/testicle shapes in this
manner reminded me of a hydra, which seems like the kind of thing one might
come across in a coral reef. Also, the “flowers” emerging from the coral
reminded me vaguely of the male and female symbols. It seemed appropriate to
draw white lines between the two circular “eyehole” shapes with Prismacolors.
This is a continuation on the theme of yesterday’s
painting. Here, I covered the page with black gouache and, once dried, drew
onto the dark shape with light Prismacolors, again achieving the eerie, ghostly
quality. It’s a matter of taste as to preferring one version to the other: I like
them both for different reasons. I like the spontaneous, gestural quality of
yesterday’s sketch; today’s has a fuller, deeper, richer, more atmospheric
quality.
I painted this quickly in gouache, letting the paint
soak into the thin, somewhat absorbent paper. I was pleased by its somewhat haunted, ghostly
quality.
I drew this in pen & ink (coquille and India),
before laying watercolor onto it and highlighting the dick with gouache. I
thought it would be fun to draw a small penis for a change, just to be
subversive, or maybe inclusive. The yellow color is a co-incidence, an
afterthought. One viewer thought I was drawing Asian dick; such was not my
intent. Or, it may be Asian dick, but then, so might all my other penis
close-ups.
