Delphine

Delphine // La Femme Naufrage // Lady Shipwreck

30" x 40" (inches) oil & gold leaf on wood panel. 

So. While creating these wild-eyed nautical girls, I've been weaving this sort of vague backstory for them; how they're lives are interwoven, how they're connected, how they abhor and adore each-other. I originally was setting Delphine up to be a motherly figure to Ophelia and Aveline, but while the piece grew and developed, that path started to feel forced. I have several other images brewing in my mind, all tied in with their story line, and I started playing with the idea of all of them being sisters. I'm intrigued by the Greek myth of the constellation Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, and decided to do a series loosely based around it.
So here we have Delphine, number three in my series The Seven Sisters.

 
The model for Delphine is my best friend Morgan of Whiteflowers. She wrote a beautiful song in collaboration, which I would love to share with you while you're visiting.

   Nautica [Delphine] by Whiteflowers

Here are some bits about my process for this piece.


As some of you know, a large portion of my creative process is the conceptualizing stage. This stage is really where the piece is really created, where I take a mental image and start drawing & combining elements together in Photoshop until I "find" it. Here is my "sketch" for Delphine. Naturally things change along the way, but I generally have the piece 90% planned out before I start painting. Of course I count on mistakes and bumps along the way to further shape the work.
I've become so comfortable working this way that I think it would be difficult to make up a painting on the spot. I know I would produce a completely different body of work if I was more spontaneous about it, which I'd like to explore more in the future. However, I do take my paintings very seriously, as they are a commitment, both time-wise & emotionally, so I suppose I save the spontaneity for my drawings and conceptualizing (for now).

 

So. I haven't played around with gold leaf much, so this was a fun experiment. I just sort of made up the process as I went along. I've recently fallen in love with Klimt and love the way he uses gold in his paintings, so I decided to try my hand at it.
After sketching out the figure, I stained the triangle portion black before applying the gold leaf, so bits of black would show through the cracks.

 I definitely busted out the hairdryer at one point. I'm not really a fan of the "waiting for the paint to dry" game. (I consider myself a patient girl, but sometimes you just want to keep going with a project, especially when feeling inspired and gung-ho. Paint drying times can seriously disrupt my flow!!) Okay. So. Hairdryer. Yes. Then comes the leafing. Which is oddly relaxing. I didn't want the gold to be perfect, which is really hard to achieve anyway.

But seriously guys, gold leaf is so pretty in person!! Photos just don't do it justice. There are these really delicate and lovely cracks in the leaf which look beautiful with the black behind it, which you can't really see in the main picture. Also, she looks super weird at this stage. Before I start painting, I like to erase all the extra pencil marks from sketching the figure, otherwise the graphite can muddy up the paint. So all that's left when I start painting are the outlines of the face, etc.


The rest is just clockwork and takes time - applying layers upon layers of paint, until I'm happy with it.

Early stages of the tattoos.



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Well that's enough for now. Got a Jackie Kennedy painting I've gotta finish for a fun upcoming Warhol-themed show! Pics soon!
Also thanks to those who came out for my show the other night, it was fun times!

And Thank you for all the birthday love. You're the best.
xxx

Lady Shipwreck, work in progress

Here's some previews of the piece I started the other day. My best friend Morgan is the model, as part of a collaboration. She wrote a beautiful song to go along with this, which I will share with you soon. I still have a lot of fine tuning to do on everything, as well as draw the tattoos and shipwrecks in her hair. But let me tell you, gold leaf is SO MUCH FUNNNNN. It's super shiny and pretty and half the time I just end up staring it.

 It's looking very Klimt-y to me, guess gold leaf will do that ;)

and uhhh, here I am hanging out with her. looking tuff.

more soooon. but right now I'm redecorating my apartment and there is stuff EVERYWHEREEEEE. I'm not sure when I started spending more money on housewares than shoes, but it makes me feel really old.

Also, I just listed a bunch of new prints in my shop, including Aveline and some of my new silhouettes. Like these lil darlings:

go take a peek ♥

xx

C

Aveline

Lady Aveline

as tumultuous as the seas to which she is bound

30" x 40" oil on wood panel
(click image to see it larger)

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It felt so different to paint a background this time. It definitely changes the piece. As did adding the stars. Somehow they brought her to life, she was no longer just a figure on a dark background, she became Aveline. I actually started to dream about her and we swam through icy waters together. Her hair doesn't often dry, but I caught it on a rare occurrence and tried to recapture it to the best of my memory.

Her octopi and jellyfish would hardly sit still as they caressed her neck and danced on her arms. Even the sails on the boat seemed to gently ripple in a phantom wind. She once referred to ships "stains on the sea". (I shudder to think of the fate that fall on the ships she meets)

One compass spun wildly, but she never looked down. I could sense her chestnut eye longing to look, as it often betrays her. Ophelia's skull is the only part of her that remained motionless. Somehow frozen over her heart.

"el mar conoce nuestro amor"

the sea knows our love

Tattoos made of squid ink and urchin needles (she couldn't escape the sea if she tried)

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And now for a few progress pictures:

At one point I was using tweezers to pick off cat hair. It was pretty ridiculous. I think I'm done using oil mediums, everything sticks to it. Everything.

drawing her tattoos

ahahaha this was in the early stages of Aveline. The night I drank too much wine and got silly. by myself. on a friday night. (i'm really cool) and texted way too many work in progress pictures to my best friend (sorry morgan)

I didn't use a primer this time as I usually just use it on the exposed portions. There wasn't any exposed wood on this piece, so I opted for no primer. For some reason this particular piece (cherry wood) was being really difficult. The oil wasn't soaking in properly, like the wood was way too smooth and just wouldn't grip the paint. I had to repaint her face like FIFTY TIMES. It was all very irritating. But it was all worth it in the end.

Next up, the sea witch La Femme Naufrage // Lady Shipwreck, mother of Aveline and Ophelia.

But first, got to finish three illustrations for Volcom, two for a canadian magazine, get ready for a show on the 15th and my solo in february! Goodness gracious I need a clone / assistant.

Hope your holidays were lovely!! Etsy shop will be reopened next year.

xx

C

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

The Garden

The Garden - 21" x 24", oil, ink & watercolor pencil on Maple
click image to see it larger

The last piece in the series of tattooed ladies. Although I seem to have become strangely addicted to the tattoos  so I don't think this series has ended. I suppose I would call this more of a phase than a series.

 I consider this piece to be the best work that I've ever done. This feeling is a little daunting though.  In a perfect world, I would think that each new piece should be better than the last, but instead I feel like I just get lucky. Since I did these three paintings relatively quickly, I have learned from each piece vital things that I have carried in to the next. My previous piece, Eternal Summer, I wasn't entirely satisfied with how the skin turned out, as I found it difficult to use the oils on top of the primer. For this piece, as an experiment I applied the GAC 100 everywhere but the skin portion: 

I love the way the raw wood soaks up the oils; it makes them dry much quicker that way. I also paint in very thin layers and use linseed oil, which also aids in a faster drying time. The quicker the oil dries, the quicker I get to draw the tattoos! 

As you may know, I am usually the model for my paintings. I find that this way I have the most control over the direction of the piece, and I also don't feel any weird pressure to make it look like anyone specific. I don't try and make my ladies look like me, though sometimes it's kind of inevitable. This time around, I wanted to make her face very different from the others, so I did. She's modeled after Lara Stone, whom I adore.

The butterfly tattoo in her early stages. That afternoon the sunlight joined me through the blinds and warmed my hands.


  

Anyway, I'm strange. I work really quickly and sometimes I think I need to slow down. If I spend more than two weeks on a piece I seem to lose inspiration and I wont work on it any longer. I'm a maniac and will paint nonstop if I have to, while the window of inspiration is still open. If I wait too long, my mind and heart wander to other ideas, other patterns, figures, shapes..
Oils and I have rekindled our romance and I think I'm going to continue this love affair. I have many projects that I do need to be working on, but I'm tempted to just glue myself to my easel and not resurface for a week. Alright, so not the best idea.

xo,
C

the garden - work in progress

It's chilly this morning. If someone were to have told me that today's date is November 12th I would believe them. But there is something very comforting about working indoors when it's so chilly outside. I've been listening to Devendra Banhart and sipping on Earl Gray since I woke up, so I really can't complain.

On to my painting. I've been working on the hair while allowing the skin dry. I'll be adding plenty more strands later, but this is a start.

I'm about to start on the tattoos now. Soon enough she'll be covered in flowers, leaves and poetry. 

yours,

Charmaine

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