Spider-man Silver on Black

Okay, not that almost everything isn't a first for me at this point but this is a first on several levels.

Last week when I visited the art store and was going through their clearance paint, I came across a tube of silver and suddenly mind mind was awash in visions of silver on black paintings.

I think the first vision I had was for Daredevil sort of three images with Daredevil facing in three different directions.

Also Spider-Man was another idea.

After I painted the painting paper black, I got stuck in what to do.  Other than the superhero idea, I thought maybe just having a partial skyline like that I observed in Chicago.  So I painted it black on Tuesday night and then let it sit to dry but then I got stuck on what to attempt.

Luckily, I was reading a comic book series at the time called Secret War from my Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars Battleworld Box Set and this particular series had different heroes set against a mostly black background.  I pretty much had decided on either Daredevil or Spider-Man and in the end, the Spider-Man seemed like the best one to go with.

So this is also the first action scene I have drawn or painted.  In some ways, I'm happy with this painting.  I guess for my skill level, it is recognizable and the silver paint ended up being harder to work with than I anticipated.  It was a bit thicker than the other colors I had worked with, but since I was going with a simple design, I could paint over lines or too thick of lines with the black.

Here's the cover art that was the basis for this painting:

Ego is Skeleton #2

Ego Is Skeleton 2

Well, my second paiting is almost done.  Who knows, maybe it is done.  I don't quite feel it yet. Maybe I want to do something with that tree?  Maybe I do want to add something that resembles cobble stones on the red path?  Maybe I just want to touch up the parts where the canvas still comes through.

Oddly enough, I like it much better when I see it in the smaller size.  It is much closer to the vision I have in my head.

In this version, I like the road side much better and I like the arch much better.  I also like the figure much better. I felt I got the effect of a wraith-like being while giving it some substance and a little more character.

I am going to post my pictures from my last blogpost just so that people who want to see all of the pictures together will have a one-stop.

Ego is Skeleton 1

Original source photograph

Original Self-Portrait #11

My First Painting!

Ego Is Skeleton #1

The seed has been growing in me for a while.

My Self-Portrait 11 had been placed on a wall where I saw it more and my eye kept getting drawn to it.

An inner voice urged me to try something with the same image.  And then I went to see the Van Gogh's Bedrooms exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute last Wednesday and Thursday (March 9th & 10th 2016). And finally the breakthrough to try paints overcame me.

Yesterday, March 12, I stopped in the local Hobby Lobby while running the weekly errands and bought an acrylic paint set and some paper for painting.

I took the kit apart. Examined the paints. Watched a little bit of an introductory video and then just jumped in. I decided not to sketch out the design and as a result, it is lacking the otherworldly distortion I would have liked to capture more of.  I also would have liked to create more texture on either side of the path.  Other parts I am quite happy with.  Even though this is originally based on a photo and then on a drawing, I think it evokes something in my imagination that created a feedback loop.

Here are the original photo and drawing:

Basis for original drawing from March 2015

Self-Portrait 11 from March 2015

Figure It Out! A Great Drawing Book for the Fledgling Artist

Well, it's been several months since I have updated.  It has been a very hard few months as I had a protracted cold and work has been very hard in throwing up those petty little annoyances that make getting any meaningful work done.  I only did one or two drawings in the meantime, usually based on videos from a very good YouTube site called My Drawing Tutorial which has a variety of tutorials.

I also received a human figure manikin and a hand manikin for Christmas and I spent quite a few pages just drawing the figures in different poses just to let my mind build new neural pathways.  But I was not finding satisfaction in my progress.

It finally occurred to me to see what kind of drawing books our local Hobby Lobby has (I don't know why it takes so long to think of these things) and I found a great variety of books including one called Figure It Out! The Beginner's Guide to Drawing People  which is the opening photo for this essay.

One of the reasons I decided to get this book and another one called Draw 50 Famous Cartoons: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Your Favorite Classic Cartoon Characters is so that when I felt like drawing but didn't have a major project of my own to satisfy my urge, I could have some ready suggestions at hand.

So, starting Sunday, which was March 6, 2016, I drew my first drawing from Figure It Out! which was a male human face:

And I thought it turned out pretty well.  Yesterday, Monday, I had a full day off of work and no other chores to do so  I was able to devote several hours to drawing and drew these:

One of the main lessons I am learning from this experience of teaching myself to draw is the expectation of perfectionism.  Now intellectually, I know I shouldn't be able to draw perfectly right out of the bat, to kill a metaphor, but emotionally it is much harder because as an American who went through the public school system, we are psychologically damaged so that we are constantly measuring ourselves against our classmates and this causes us to devalue both ourselves and the work we can produce.  I think this kills our imagination and puts us into a low-self-esteem mode that makes us more manageable to government bureaucracies that enjoy managing our lives.  And we've been taught through experience that we aren't very valuable anyway, so why not let some controlling sociopath control our lives for us?

The other thing I've learned is that drawing can be very hard on the beginner, even though I spent probably 5 hours at the drawing table yesterday, most of the time is spent on the initial step of getting the oval shape of the head right.  But I have decided this is okay as you see, I drew the same image twice, once where I couldn't get the shape of the head right, or at least, to my satisfaction, but I decided I would draw it once to completion and then draw it again and I was very pleased with how the second attempt turned out.

This morning I was having the same problem trying to draw a head facing to the left and in that case I left my misshapen oval and decided to do a blog post.

So there's the update!