Feathers & Skulls - finished

Yeah, yeah, I know. I've been a terrible blogger lately. Not going to make up any excuses here. 

To quote one of my lovely Anonymous readers "Holy hell, update your blog already!" 
So here's to you! ;)

Finished this piece a little bit ago, but to be honest I couldn't really look at it anymore. it took me quite a while, which I'm now learning isn't the best thing for me. My wandering eye distracts me and I start fantasizing about the paintings I want to do next. I then start to lose interest in the one I'm working on and the motivation isn't really there anymore. BUT. I had fun. I tried new things, listened to new tunes, it was a grand ol' time. Here you go. Enjoy.

40" x 40" oil & ink on cherry panel

up close & personal

I had fun experimenting with glazing on this piece. I really loved it. I used a mixture of linseed oil & galkyd for the glazing medium, which worked really well. I first tried using straight galkyd and HATED it. Let me say that again. HATED it. It's super thick and sticky and annoying and doesn't blend properly and and and i'm done whining now. Luckily, you don't start glazing until the other layers are completely dry, so wiping it all off was a cinch. Then I tried linseed and oil and it melted my heart. So buttery and lovely. It really did the trick in smoothing out brush strokes. I ended up mixing it with a bit of the galkyd to give it more of a glossy/glazed finish. Anyway. Did about 3 or so layers of glaze on the face which was a lot of fun. I did some glazing on the body too, but not as much as I would have liked. But, like I said, couldn't look at it anymore ;)

You can see the glossyness of it here. But it's also difficult to get a good photo of it, as gloss LOVES to reflect light in all the wrong places ;)

Also, here is an update on some upcoming shows I'll be partcipating in (most are in the bay area):

November 4th - 4707 Telegraph, Oakland, CA 

December 4th, 2010 - Mezzanine, San Francisco, CA

December 2010 - 111 Minna, San Francisco, CA

Dec 2010, @ 323East Gallery, Royal Oak, MI

January 7th 2010 - C.A.V.E Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

January 2010 - Vessel, San Francisco, CA

Okay dearies, have a LOVELY Halloween! Don't get in to too much trouble. Or do. Whatever. 

Can't wait to show you my next piece I started. Get ready for Ophelia's evil twin pirate mermaid sister ;)

xoxxoxoxox

Charms

Feathers and skulls - work in progress

40" x 40" oil on wood
Aztec-inspired woman. (yes, she's modeled after the beautiful Adriana Lima). Dang, those Brazilians! Sooo gorgeous. But of course she'll be covered in tattoos when I'm done with her ;) I've also been playing with the idea of using some gold leaf on this piece, Klimt has inspired me..
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On another note, I'm putting together an F.A.Q post. I've been getting a lot of the same questions about my wood painting techniques so I figured I'd put all the answers in one place. What other sort of (art-related) questions would you like to see answered?


And prints of Boat Shoulders will be in my shop by Thursday, stay tuned ♡

xo,
C

Ophelia / Boat Shoulders

click to see it larger

40" x 40" oil & ink on birch panel

Ophelia. Name derived from Greek οφελος (ophelos) meaning "help". Her name also belongs to Hamlet's lover who eventually went insane and drowned herself. However, the similarities end there; this Ophelia will not meet the same fate as Hamlet's lover. The sea dare not drown her, she's one who would drown the sea. She posed for me once. Phantom trade winds made her hair dance gently around her eyes, caressing the sails on the boats that rest delicately on her shoulders. The air cooled as it passed over her skin, carrying aromas of salt sweetened by the sea flowers that grow in her wake. Perhaps she would suffocate without these ghostly sea winds, without the salty air to sustain her. 
Then there are her eyes. Those two left eyes. Oh, how they hardly blinked, how one remained locked upon my gaze. Her delicate tattoos serve as a futile warning, if you can read them, you are already too close. 
She grew impatient and I could feel the unease in her, how the earth felt unstable beneath her feet. Some would call her a prisoner to the sea, though a wiser man would know the sea as her prisoner.   

As usual, I first primed the exposed wood with GAC 100, did about three coats this time. I prefer to paint directly on to the wood, as it makes blending colors easier, but having the outside portions primed makes it forgiving should any unwanted paint get on the wood (living with a kitten is sometimes dangerous). Detail was done in various colors of ink.

 Tattoos drawn with black watercolor pencil. 


Translated:

"Ad infinitum"(Latin) 

"to infinity without end"

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"y de que nadie oyera las canciones de navegantes que a veces cantaba bajo las estrellas"

"and that no one should hear the songs that sailors sometimes sang beneath the stars"

From Gabriel García Márquez's short story Un Señor Muy Viejo Cona Alas Enormes (An Old Man With Enourmous Wings) 
(Thanks to my lovely Morgita for her vast knowledge of romantic poetry)


 

above is the framed drawing of the original "Boat Shoulders". The blueprints for this piece. 
 

 

messy tubes of oil paint, little bottles of oil medium and a box of hooks, nails and screws.


Hope you like her, she'll be on exhibit in January for my solo show at Vessel. 
Prints coming soon.


xoxo
C

Boat Shoulders painting - Work in Progress

Well hello Monday, meet Ophelia.

Here she is, halfway there. I'm hoping to finish her this week. And fast, because she's getting impatient. She feels naked without her boats and tattoos. Is she staring at you too? Cause she won't stop staring at me.


  

It all started the other night when Joe and I were playing silly games on our iphones. One minute we were playing Trivial Pursuit and then I sort of saw this painting in my mind, the painted version of my drawing Boat Shoulders. I saw it much differently in my head than how it's turning out, but that's how it is. You see an image, then it flits away as quickly as it arrived. I'm left with a memory that I begin to form and shape in to a painting. I never really considered my drawings to be conceptual versions of paintings, but perhaps they are beginning to be. Anyway, I have this strange love for the nautical world and I think it is rapidly becoming a common theme / direction my work is taking. 

Here she is at an earlier stage (Friday).

I seriously can't handle how beautiful this wood is. When the light hits it just right it seems to glow.  

❤,
c

Eternal Summer

Behold! The tan-lined, tattooed, sleepy-eyed dame.

click to see it larger

And now it's time for round two of long and detailed process explanations.

But first, I must say how extremely excited I am for this show at Gallery Hijinks! It's right around the corner, the 21st of August. (As well as right around the corner from my house. Win.) Anyway, if you are in town and in the neighborhood, my tattooed ladies would love to see you.

Alright. So this time around I tried out some things differently. A lot of people have been asking me if I use a primer on the wood or some sort of gesso. I haven't in the past, but this time I did. The problem you run in to when choosing a primer is that it's generally white and very opaque. I like to leave the wood exposed around the figure, so a white gesso just wouldn't do. And it's terribly limiting to only apply it where you think paint is going to be. I'd feel very trapped if that were the case. Then this lovely lady reccomended a product to me, something to add a barrier between the woodgrain and the paint. Ladies and gentleman, I give you GAC 100! It's white in the bottle but dries perfectly clear! Now, I must say, it definitely did the trick in making the wood more vibrant and not so sponge-like. It also did make it much more forgiving if a drop of paint landed where it shouldn't have. (A little bit of mineral spirits picked it right up.)  Since it's like adding a thin coating of plasticy substance to the wood, the paint handles very differently. I found it a little more difficult to work the skin how I normally do, but it made doing the hair really easy as well as the halo. I personally prefer to paint directly on to the wood when rendering skin, but the hair was so easy to do on top of the primer, as it stopped the india ink from bleeding through the grain. So, for the next piece I'm doing, I applied the primer to everywhere but the skin portion. (More details on that later, but I definitely prefer doing it this way)
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Here she is at the start. I start filling in the pencil sketch with the basic pattern of light and shadows. From there I keep layering and layering until I'm satisfied.
 


Here I am drawing little houses. I know, weird, who paints in little dresses? I seriously do. Somehow I manage to get paint on everything but my clothes.. some strange skill I have acquired somewhere. I usually end up with bits of red or black paint on my face instead.
I also introduced a few new colors in to my palette which was fun, Rose Portrait and Mars Red (which is basically a Burnt Umber with some red hues).

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A sleeve of Victorian houses, my homage to San Francisco.

As stated in my previous post, the words say "thy eternal summer shall not fade", a snippet of Shakespeare's sonnet XVIII. This particular sonnet is so very special to me. In the 6th grade my grammar teacher taught this sonnet to us, we all had to memorize it and later recite it in front of the the class. I remember repeating it over and over for my mom, nervously trying to remember all the strange words. She would always tell me slow down, to speak it as if someone was writing it. I still have it memorized, as do my two best friends Lizzy and Morgan. It's this funny little connection we all have to eachother. I've always loved Mrs. Motgomery for making us memorize it, even if I didn't really understand it at the time. Now I find it to be so beautiful..

Here it is in full length:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
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For the halo, I mixed gold paint and bleached linseed oil, it made it nice and glossy.

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As for the tattoo above, it's an outline of a world map, and a famous French quote that I adore.
"Il n'est rien de réel que le rêve et l'amour."

//

 "Nothing is real but dreams and love"

(which pretty much sums me up entirely)

Alright, I'm starting to get all sentimental and shit. So it's time to wrap this up.
 Once the piece is done and dry, I start the scan. My scanner bed is only 8.5" x 11", so it definitely takes a lot of scans to capture the whole image. Someday I'll invest in a larger scanner, but for now, this works. Here you can see the ridiculous amount of layers already, and that's only half the image. It's very tedious but definitely worth getting a high DPI image of it.

Also, the sound of my scanner drives my kitten nuts, it's a hilarious sight.

Think that's about it. Thanks for reading! As usual, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. I am always experimenting and learning as I go, but I'm happy to share my discoveries with you.

xoxoxo
C

NAUTICA

She's all done, for the moment. Minor tweaking is inevitable.

click to see it larger 

24" x 30" oil, watercolor pencil & ink on wood

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Here's a song for you to listen to while I go in to far too much detail about my painting process:

The Innocence Mission - Rain (Setting Out in the Leaf Boat)

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Finished her up yesterday. I'm a big fan of the size, it's a little larger than my normal oil paintings, but still manageable. I had a lot of fun playing with nautical elements, as that world fascinates me so much. The mermaid tattoo is inspired by art nouveau designs. The quote says "fair winds and following seas", which is a traditional mariner's phrase, it's like a farewell/blessing. It gives me chills a little bit.

Throughout the painting process I go through many emotional ups and downs. Mostly switching from "this isn't working, you've lost your touch, Charmaine" and "you know you'll get it eventually, just keep at it". Well, eventually it gets to a point that I'm comfortable with and I take it to the next step.

Here's a little bit about my painting process: the longest part for me is the conceptualizing. I spend a lot of time on the computer sketching in Photoshop, playing with colors and themes. Since I work from photo references I generally draw on top of the photos so I can change the hairstyles, clothing (or no clothing), etc. Once I feel good about the image I'll start sketching it on the wood. Even though my paintings are highly planned out, I leave a lot of room for changes and improvising.

After I'm happy with the pencil sketch, I start with the skin. I guess you could consider my technique more like "finger painting". I like to blend the colors together with my fingers, I find it's a much smoother result than using a brush. (My flesh color palette consists of Yellow Ochre, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, Titanium White and Ultramarine Blue.)

Once I am satisfied with the skin, I start the hair (my favorite part). I start by blocking in most of the color and shape with flat black oil paint. Once the black dries a bit, I bust out my India ink and draw in individual strands, just to give it more life.

The tattoos are predominately black watercolor pencil. I know, water and oil don't mix, but somehow the pencil works great on top of the oil paint (once it has dried a little bit). To get the color hues, I mix a lot of paint thinner with the oil so it's nice and transparent. I suppose some linseed oil would work too. If I feel like it needs more definition then I'll go in with my ink to get some darker lines. 

For the blue halo, I was in a bit of a predicament. I felt like it really needed it and I wasn't going to be happy if it wasn't there, but it's difficult to get a smooth and even color when painting with thinned-down paint directly on the wood, as it soaks in so quickly. Then I found an old bottle of Bleached Linseed Oil buried in the depths of my art drawers. It adds a nice gloss and transparency to the oil, which made it really easy to use directly on the wood. It's also thin enough where I could paint directly on top of the hair to get the blue behind it.

Anyway. Yeah. It works wonders. I wish I had used it for the skin! I'm going to experiment with it on my next painting that I'm starting tomorrow. Yes, more tattooed ladies coming up!

Well, thanks for looking, hope you like her.

xo

C

work in progress pictures

It feels good to use oils again. I feel like I say that everytime I paint. ha.

Anyway, lots to go, but here's a preview.

work in progress - close up

Progress shot. it's almost done.

Sneek Peak

Little preview of a new piece I'm working. Oils on wood.

My palette:

yellow ochre, titanium white, alizarin crimson, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, black

Headaches

Finished!

Oil & colored pencil (for the tattoo) on wood.

I decided to go with white hair. Now to my next piece!

..this seem to be how I do things. A several month lull, then 5 pieces in a row. Watch out.

Headache revisited

Work in Progress

It's been a little while since I've painted. It feels good to start up again. I've been wanting to do another version of my painting "Headache", which I did a year ago (almost do the day). It's fun for me to see my progress and how my style is developing/evolving. Also this piece will be in the upcoming show, Glass Cinder and Thorns at 323 East Gallery in March.

I'm still undecided about the hair. I'm thinking either flat white or flat black. I think the pure white hair, (like my original "Headache"), is more interesting than black hair, but I do like the contrast of black against the wood. Thoughts?

A little tidbit about how I work..
I am usually the model for my paintings (unless I can get someone to model for me!). First I start by taking some pictures, playing around with poses, gestures, etc. Then I "sketch" my ideas out on photoshop (as you can see in the third picture). It's much easier for me to play on photoshop than to just dive in to a piece. I am very particular about what I want and how I want it to look. By first roughly laying it out on the computer, I can iron out the kinks and really fine tune the look, fool around with colors, hair, accessories. Of course, once I start painting, it's a completely different game. That's where I count on accidents and mis-strokes to shape the piece.

Well, enjoy! It's good to be back, i missed you.