next up, a sculpture

It seemed, according to the stat page, that the story time post was fairly popular, so I'll put more of those up.... so many wonderful things have happened while I was out painting. I think they are interesting events but there's a guy I know, he's nice enough, a Civil War reenacter .... or is it reenactor... anyway, he thinks the CVW is most intensely fascinating. I, however, could care less. Yes, it was a profoundly important war which, for the most part, has ended but somehow no matter what we talk about he steers the conversation quickly to the Battle of Perspicacityville and within seconds my brain snaps shut. Shields up. Uh-oh, warp 5 tachyon boredom missiles, incoming, all power to forward shields. I may say something about tapioca and he deftly segues into the eating habits of the 7th battalion under Commander Cody, the point is, I'm wary about posting what happened in my day unless it is of some kind of relevant interest and that, of course, is subjective. But I'll post more stuff like that... to me it's more interesting than a painting, if it doesn't interest, no harm done. I never really know where to put commas, and colons: they should have a colon checker function. Just sayin.

Anyhooo. This is a bit like a painting of another painting only it's a sculpture. It's a piece called Man carving his own destiny by Albin Polasek. I guess there are no copyright violations here.  I should be pretty well versed in intellectual property infractions having been an illustrator but when we start crossing over from copying paintings and photos into a marble sculpture in a garden, it gets a tad hazy for me. I saw it as a chance to do some figurative work. I even used the sight-size method as best I understand it. I blocked in the drawing and stood back at a distance such that the painting and the sculpture were the exact same size and right next to one another according to my point of view. I took a brush, laid it horizontal and went from checkpoint to checkpoint, head, chest waist, etc. to make sure that I was seeing things correctly. I suppose I'm pointing this out because the guy had a formidable schlong and I don't want to have that come back to me. I measured and double checked and it was, well, mule-like in dimension. I was going to fuzz out the area, a kind of creative manscape editing but I thought it was sort of funny, what with the mallet and all. So I left this blue man contemplating his good fortune and his destiny.

Oh and I did use a bit of an old illustration/painting trick here. Where the light bouncing off the statue meets the dark of the background, I used a warm transition color to give the feel of photons obscuring the dark background. Also rimmed the other light areas with streaks of red and orange.... gives it some glow. painter of lite.