just got upstairs from a pretty amazing session in the studio. no, i wasnt laying down the tightest of drum grooves. and no, i wasnt wah chicka wahing my way to deep soulness... i was listening to christian mcbride. one of my underlings at wfyi burned me a live cd, and yea, my mind has been blown. im pretty sure its the live at tonic album (disk 1) and it is outright amazing.

so piece wise, i started off with two pretty mundane washes from friday; kinda transparent yellow green just washed up with a two inch brush. i threw them up, hit them with what was left of the pallet, and let them dry. well, tonight i was wishing i could have played some drums, so one is a cymbal (ride from the vibe i was on) and the other a bass drum with a hammer headed pedal kicking in. a few reds, some orange to freak it out in places, and some illustration black lines for overdone form. finished off with some pink/white wash over the remaining flat space and ive almost got a whole drum kit painting. well, not even close to a whole kit, but im happy with the product seeing as both pieces seem totally plastic ideas of what i was feeling. richard nicholson would be proud.

then i got back to four smaller pieces, again from fridays beginnings. they all deal with memory and how the past cannot be changed through thoughts. one may decide that selective memory can help an individual keep the lessons (not) learned from past mistakes or decisions from haunting them, but there is no use. none. you remember the bad stuff and it stings. your memory, if youre messed up, reminds you of one good thing assigned to that painful memory in hopes of taking the sting away. if youve learned anything the sting is still there, only dulled by time and life and how you work now, but it still stings.
the pieces started as washy profiles of people i remembered from the late 90's ... just the most abstract of sketchy portions of the persons.... i cant even remember who they are now... probably friends from the days i casually did some drugs i cant afford now.... but people in my memory nonetheless. tonight, with the help of some late 90's bands blaring through headphones, i was able to layer on some high and low lights, much like the sing of memory i spoke of before, only with the ups too.
one can say taking the sting of a memory away is just "leaning" while i say its just making the memory more coherent.
yea, a cop came to talk to me while i was at some party, but i really remember how awesome the band he shut down was when it happened. that isnt really learning. thats just reminicense.

so ive got some paintings that deal with memory popping out of me. they still look like right now.

and one more: a twisted body piece like the ones from april, only way smaller and less worked. i still want to layer in some blacks like i had with the larger pieces. but the simplicity of the sketch, almost f. baconey in its approach, really makes me want to return hardcore to the figure.


now if only me and my wife had matching schedules.......

lets get wet.

i finally got back to grabbing more than just an hour or two in the studio and the results, are, well....

i flipped the paper and got started on the glossy side, spat two layers of ink and lines, then wiped them down with t-shirt cotton. repeated. what you see above is the 'good' one out of about three experiments in wiping and repeating. acting quickly between layers allows for a nice negative line to form, adding depth in a way. my buddy Rob said that the first round of works lacked visual information. he's a painter. whah.

i am happy with the potential outcome in later works, but i have yet to play with control and contrast. in the back of my head i try to think of how to pull this kind of image off with lithography. then i think about undergraduate times and get mad.

then i started playing with watercolors.










the color was the key, really. i wanted a dead looking yellow that could be both natural in nature (autumn leave) or in the body (mucus or bile)....the result was, well, your choice of the two. the image is that of hops which are most often used on beer labels. i cut the size down, increased scale and weight of the line used for illustrations and designs. the yellow layer looked undefined and not clear enough to reference to a tiny part of on-product advertising, so the black outline took the existing shape and coloring booked it. its watercolor, man. i didnt wet the paper or tape it down or use any blocking pastes or salt or shit like that. i just painted with it. i could craft show the shit out of these, but as soon as i open my mouth about the process, im done.


the hops image reminded me of wreath leaves, so one, "W" is just for a wreath that is anti-seasonal. the "F" is for a funeral wreath. honor the dead with death, i guess.


i have a few more hybrids to show off, but that will come later. K? bye.