Bob Ross Remixed — I find this inspiring

As inspiring as the man himself.

This is the kind of thing  auto-tune is best for, imo.  Making music of inspiring things people said, but did not sing…  I saw another one of these once made with Carl Sagan.  (More of that.)

Painting: Spectrum

I’m back!

Spectrum, acrylic and latex caulk on 11″ x 14″ canvas, January 20, 2013

Spectrum!  Because I am not going to call it ‘rainbow’, grunt, snort, wow that spot on the floor is interesting.  But enough feigning of manly insecurities, the deal with this painting is not so much the spectrum as that it’s my first experiment with using latex caulk as an art media.  It does give it some texture…  This picture with the harsher lighting shows better the blobs of caulk that I painted over.

Spectrum, acrylic and latex caulk on 11″ x 14″ canvas, January 20, 2013

One note on spectrums though — it strikes me as fascinating and unfathomable that the only real difference between colors is frequency and wavelength.  Same difference between the frequencies we see and those we don’t.  Makes you wonder if some kind of neurological manipulation could allow us to further subdivide the visual spectrum and experience more colors.  Colors we cannot even imagine now.  Or going the other direction…  after the singularity I just want gamma-ray eyes, is all I’m sayin’…

On a housekeeping note, I’m changing how I write this blog.  You may have noticed, I’m not going to slavishly post twice a week anymore.  That led to lame posts between paintings I think, and more importantly it was starting to turn blogging, and worse, painting into work.  Not work in the sense of something I get paid to do, but in the sense of house work and yard work — something I’d just rather not do at all.  We don’t want that to happen to painting and blogging do we??  No Zorgs, we don’t!!

One of the best pieces of advice my dad gave me was that the best way to ruin a good hobby is to turn it into work.  And wouldn’t ya know it, that’s exactly what I was doing.  That Cosmic Calendar stuff…  it was a really cool idea when I decided to do it, but wow it got to be a drag in the last days of December.  The irony of this change is not lost on me — I first decided to stick to a biweekly schedule because I wanted the pressure of needing to finish paintings so I’d have something to blog about twice a week, and get more paintings done that way.  But I just don’t think I need that motivator anymore.  Quite the opposite, too much blogging was threatening to kill the blog and the paintings.  Before last weekend I hadn’t painted in about a month.  Just didn’t feel like it.  Tried painting anyway, but just wasn’t having any fun.  I gave up that day after I broke my palette knife.

Until last weekend when suddenly I had five new paintings going all at once!  🙂  This is the first of those.  So now it’s going to be a normal blog and I’ll post when I want to.  Hopefully this will lead to better posts when I do.

Artist: Cyriak Harris

Wow.  Cyriak Harris does some really amazing stuff.  That’s about all I can say.  I’m stunned.  It’s stunning.  Enjoy!

How can I not re-blog this?

Thanks Joseph for the original, and customized art!  🙂

The joke here has to do with the fact that my real name is Charlie and both Joseph and I think cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, octopus) are some of the most amazing animals ever

Check out Joseph’s Lunch Sketches.  These sketches he dashes off most days just over lunch are delightfully creative, amusing, and just very good.

In progress…

Again no finished paintings to show, but I have one in the works:

In progress…

It’s coming along.  The underlying blue and green was the original idea, but that went wrong.  So it’s already failed — nowhere to go now but up!  🙂  The plan is to add more and more paint until I stop adding paint.  Then it will be done.

And just because I feel like that is not much of a post, here is artist Mike Grab balancing river stones in a swiftly rushing stream.  This is just amazing.

Check out teh lunch sketches!

My IRL friend Joseph sketches most days ’round lunchtime.  His work is really cool.  He has a thematic penchant for octopus and other cephalopods, which I share.  For this one he took a joke I think I made, as a request (about a cuttlefish with a jet pack) and produced this awesomeness!

Scuttlefish!

Scuttlefish! Joseph Toschlog, pen and ink, July 11, 2012

I love the eyes.

Check out LunchSketches.com!

This is amazing – Dalton Ghetti

Tiny sculptures carved from pencil lead! Click to see more!

Miniature Art On the Tip of Pencil by Dalton Ghetti

A reeeeeal painting! Made with paintbrushes!

Finally!  A real painting!  No palette knives, no string, no paint smooshed between folded paper!  A real painting made with real paintbrushes!  (mostly)

Fried Eggs and Thumbtacks:
(small painting 18)

Fried Eggs and Thumbtacks, Small painting 18, acrylic on 8″ x 10″ canvasboard, May 26, 2012

Ok the gold and silver ‘thumbtacks’ are drips of liquid acrylic — the bump on each just formed as they dried, which I thought was pretty cool — and the yellow scrolling design was made with a craft pick, but everything else was done with good ol’ trusty paint brushes.

Fried Eggs and Thumbtacks was inspired by David Hockney’s 1993 Still Life in Landscape, and by pretty much everything sbmacinnis does.  Thanks for the inspiration Stephen!

Still Life in Landscape, David Hockney, 1993

I thought a lot about yummy fried eggs as I painted this, but then I forgot about that and I haven’t gotten around to making yummy fried eggs yet…

If you’re painting food, maybe you should be cooking — or better yet, eating —  instead?  Lesson learned?   I dunno…  🙂

Painting: Rorschach 2 — Don’t eat that bug!

Don’t eat that bug!  I’d go for the plain looking crickets instead…

Don’t eat that bug! – Rorschach 2, acrylic on 9″ x 12″ canvas paper, May 2012

It may not bear much resemblance, but this was inspired by Marina Kanavaki‘s “Between the lines“.  I thought it would come out looking more like trees reflected in water than a like big, toxic larva.   …or perhaps to you it looks like a bunny?  People have been seeing so many bunnies and rabbits in my work lately it’s like a freakin’ unintentional theme!  🙂

Again, I scumbled and blended in the blue-gray background, and after that was dry squirted on lines of yellow, green, and black, and folded it in half, lengthwise this time.  Pulled it apart and voilà.  Took minutes to paint and two days to dry.  Yes this is acrylic, but a lot of it!

There are three quotes that guide my thought and action when I paint:

“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.”
– Frank Tibolt

We need to just dive in and do it.  Stop just sitting around and thinking about what to create.  Because this is so true — action generates inspiration.  More good ideas come while actively trying to create something.  It’s much rarer to get a good idea just by thinking about it.  It does happen occasionally, but that’s the problem — it’s occasional — good ideas are just not frequent enough that way.

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”
– John Cage

This helps me stop second guessing if what I’m working on is good or bad.  Ultimately beauty and ugliness are completely subjective.  How incredibly beautiful is a big, fragrant pile of shit… to a dung beetle?  What do you think that same dung beetle would think of this?  But I digress.  Keeping this in mind helps me stop second guessing — which is paralyzing to creativity.  When I can stop that, creativity is liberated and I produce my best work.  Actually, I need to work harder at keeping this in mind…

“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”
-Marcel Duchamp

This helps me keep in mind what it is I’m doing.  It helps me dispel delusions of ‘expectations’, because to conform to expectations — real or imagined, usually imagined — is to put yourself into a rut.  For me art is participatory.  Fitting ‘expectations’ would only discourage feedback, interpretation, and comment.

My artwork is participatory.  You play a large part in it, you create a large part of what it is with your interpretations.  You imbue it with meaning — deep or superficial, much more than I do.  In short, it becomes much more than what it was when the paint dried, when you give it your interpretation.  To me, the art is not complete without this blog — without your interpretation, your input, your comment.  This is my sincere thanks for your comments and interpretations!  🙂  Thank you!

And don’t eat that bug!

Bravo Danica Phelps!

Artists do art.  When life gave artist Danica Phelps a load of crap, she turned it into art.  I say Bravo!

Shrugging off legal setback, artist Danica Phelps turns court ruling into new work

The story.