The paint ended up reeeaally thick in some places, almost like an oil painting. Go on! Zoom in!

He’s got a bit of a Sean Bean thing happening. Uh, he also happens to look quite a bit like a fellow I work with. Which is actually just a very strange coincidence.

Bit of a glare in the photo, but it’s not like you have to pay to see it. What do you want from me? I’m on free innernet here…

There’s a bunch of things to say about this one… For starters, it was reeeeally interesting (and different) to be able to paint siblings together. Pretty cool comparison, I thought. It was a really interesting (low-vocabulary Mondays?) study in their similarities and their differences. Donno how evident it is in the end, you be the judge, but the differences in the temperature and tone of their skin colour was, well, really interesting. This was fun. I like twofers.

The other really fascinating (not interesting?) comparison is between this painting and the first time I painted Saroja. I had it in my head that they were actually really, really similar. But when I finally looked at them side by side there were a lot more differences than I thought. For one thing my painting style from a year ago until now has changed a lot. Haha, that was a pleasant surprise. Hmmm, well, I suppose I should say that TO ME it’s changed a lot. Maybe this is only the kind of thing that I notice… But I think it’s pretty obvious that I paint with a lot more confidence now, and that I’m actually a lot better at mixing colour. Is that perhaps, REALLY INTERESTING??

If you know Saroja, it’s also interesting (really interesting?) to think about which painting is a better likeness of her. From my perspective, they each seem to capture something slightly different, and not just in the sense of which one looks more like her.

[A third much more superfluous comparison would be that both times there was no lunch involved. Coffee the first time, tea the second. TV was also a factor. Cable the first time, a movie the second. Oh! The intricacies of art!]

Before you get all weird on me, I didn’t use red. And yes, it was a conscious decision. I thought it’d be fun. And was it? Yes. I’m gonna try not bringing yellow the next time I try this limited pallette thing… and then blue the next time. Should be weird, should be fun, should be colours I’d normally never mix.

It’s interesting that I don’t normally paint a full figure. I mean, I’m drawn to portraiture much more than anything else, so I guess it’s not surprising. But it is odd that I don’t do this very often. Haha, I could probably use the practice. Also I should mention that I really like green.

So! The old Lunch and a Portrait thing was recently reinstated! At least the portrait part… oh wait! I almost forgot, Devin DID have dinner with Jessica and I that night. Hey! Alright!

Yeah, that really is a pink wing-back chair. It's pretty friggin cool, bro.

Anyhow, Devin is an old bro of mine from waaaaaay back! Oh hey bro. I appreciate this portrait because I got to mix that greyish, greenish, five-o’clock-shadow colour. I love that colour. Don’t know why… It usually only comes up in self-portraits. And Devin will appreciate this post because of how many times I have used the word, “bro.” Thanks, Devin. Solid.

So getting right down to it, I’ve been dropping in on a drop-in painting session at the Toronto School of Art. Pretty cool; four hours, one pose, and some freaking PAINT. Ka-bam. This is the first one froooom, uh, I think early March?

I figured this one was finished a bit early and did a bunch of sketches after. Are they posted here? Nope. Why not? Donno.

Ah, you know what? I haven’t posted in a while, let’s up the ante. Here’s the one from the next week…

Didn't finish this one early, but who's counting?

So if you wanna get technical and in-depth here, aka leave know if you have a short attention span, both weeks I brought a pretty limited colour range. I decided to stop using synthetic pigments and go for the richer, more toxic stuff… ah yeah. Anyway, that means I have a bunch of old colours I don’t use anymore, and I’ve only been bringing those ones to these painting sessions. It’s oddly freeing to restrict your pallette. You know you can’t rely on colours you’d normally use, so you end up experimenting more… or at least that’s how it works with me. Oh me oh my.

They’re also painted on unprimed masonite, which is a hell of a lot of fun. The wood actually absorbs a lot of paint, so if you don’t layer up the paint, you don’t get any opacity. Really interesting to work with. And probably the antithesis of “archival.” Screw it, bro.

Ok, enough colloquialisms… but this IS pretty exciting. Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, is THE FIRST Gothic Horror. Oh yeah, this is where it aaaaaall started. Well, theoretically. But generally speaking and historically speaking,  this is the beginning of the genre. Whether or not it sparked the genre, or was simply the first of a movement that was starting regardless, who knows.

Either way, this is the big one.

Flourished story, flourished cover.

The Gothic text was a dream to carve. Seriously. I was also watching Star Trek the Motion Picture while I did it (the old one, not the new one… you know, with VGER. Oh man…), so I guess everything just really came together that day.

Haha, does it take away from the image when I reveal stuff like that?

And speaking of stuff, my back-log of prints to post has gotten pretty big, so let’s just jump right back in, shall we?

Now The Devil-Fish isn’t actually the title of a book, but rather a chapter from The Sea-Travelers by Victor Hugo. But that’s ok cause it’s only a half-size book cover. And it’s only a half-size cover because I originally made this print to be part of a print exchange, and 3.5 x 5 inches was the maximum print size. Pretty convenient considering my regular book covers are all 5 x 7.

Anyhow, I printed the editions on a big sheet of Stonehenge paper and cut them out after. I’ve done a second run of it since, so take a look!

Had to allow for a 5 x 7 sheet size...

The page in the corner turned into bookmarks...

Hey! And here we go!

Technically speaking, step 1 would be reading the book. But I don't have any pictures of that. Let's just start here.

First I start sketching out some ideas… this was the beginnings of Kipling’s “The Phantom Rickshaw.” I work out the format and how I want the type to look. Here you can see a lot of my research drawings. I like to go at it with as much background as I can. There’s even a sketch of Rudyard!

Insert Caption Here

Uh, next I do a final drawing, and then transfer it to my rubber lino block (which isn’t reeeally a “linoleum” block at all) and then I carve the crap out of it! I don’t think that’s too vague…

Hey, haven't you posted this before? What a ripoff...

Aaaand then the printing! I think I’ll post a picture of my bookmarks sometime soon before I run out of them, but there’s a bit of a peek at how they work in this photo. How do I pack SO MUCH into one post? My goodness.

Well, there you go! More or less. Some need more sketching than others, but this one is a pretty good example of whats it is thats I do.

Back in May (I think), Jessica and I had this grand idea to lure friends to our house with a promise of lunch in return for a little modeling. You know, like dinner and a movie, except instead of dinner it was lunch and instead of a movie it was a portrait. Makes sense if you think about it…

Anyhow, long story short, only the first one turned out to include lunch, the second was a light dinner, and the third I think just a cup of coffee (and I might have been the only one to have any). But in the end we ended up with four obliging friends and three paintings before the whole idea, uh, fizzled out… and here they are!

Ms. Jaime Stief and a partial second-pose

So Jaime was the first. All three ended up being about two hour sessions. Being the first though, this one is a little rough, but Jaime’s already agreed to do another sometime. Haven’t you Jaime? (blackmail, yessss.)

Fusca and Fischer, the two Dans

This one was a TWO-FER!!

Ms. Saroja Ponnambalam

And finally was Saroja! This one is weird cause I swear that depending on when you look at it, she’s either got a smile or a sneer. I think it may have to do with the fact that we were watching some questionable TV at the time. I knew I should have brought Star Trek…