Stories are a staple in the whole of human existence, whether it’s a story that is in a book, an oral story or a representation of a story in a picture. In terms of being an artist and creating art, stories can make or break you. If you haven’t figured it out by now, today I am going to talk about stories. As an artist, particularly in painting there is a good amount of story development involved especially if you want someone to purchase your artwork and take it seriously. Usually I start my paintings with a thought, emotion or concept that I would like to either express or exploit. As thoughts and feelings flow and begin to develop they flow together and become much more than the initial concept I begin a piece with. As an example I will use one of the last oil paintings I completed on canvas titled “Looking for a balance.”
The piece was originally based off of the ouroboros symbol or the symbol of a snake biting its own tail. I may have gotten the idea from watching the show Red Dwarf because it had an episode named ouroboros, but that’s beside the point. Originally I wanted to draw an ouroboros snake as an iris of an eye which seemed simple enough at the time. I googled some imagery of the ouroboros symbol and began to sketch some out with the attempt to make the symbol look like an iris around a pupil. This proved to be difficult due to the fact that I wanted the eye to look like an eye and have several properties that eyes have. I began to think of solutions to that, when suddenly the thought of dichotomy came to mind. From that thought of dichotomy developed the idea to use the yin yang symbol. It’s a symbol synonymous with the sense of balancing things out.
Below are a couple of Sketches from the project
After the fusion of those concepts the rest of the painting fell together easily and almost fluidly. At the time I created this painting I would prime my canvas different colors and that would help decide whether the painting had warm or cool colors. To be honest I have no clue how that system came about with priming canvases, but I usually enjoyed the end results of the paintings I created at the time. In portraits it is the skin tone that usually tells me about the background. The surrounding area usually is the last part of the painting to be developed in my projects. This is due to the fact that I have a tendency to focus on certain details and I find that I can be completely and utterly fascinated with the small details in a face, on a person, or any other object I may find interesting. It’s a subjective way of doing things, but it usually works the best.
In this particular painting I didn’t have to worry about the background at all because the whole piece focuses on an eye. In future entries I may go into the process of one where I have to worry about a background. I feel as though I will have enough imagery on my external drive to go through the entire process from a sketch to a painting better than this entry.
Initial Concept of the painting:
After I think a piece of work is completed I get different sets of eyes to look at the painting. This usually is a good idea because I get interesting responses and thoughts about what someone else thinks about a piece of mine. Sometimes it even helps me add or remove certain elements from the painting to help make it look like something that I would like to have represent me.
Almost completely painted original idea:
Finished product after I realized what I could and could not do:
That’s all I have to say about this particular piece in terms of the process of it being made. It wasn’t until a few weeks after this song was completed I had a pair of eyes challenge me and whether I truly believe that life is strictly in a dichotomy. For the record, I do not and that set me forth into trying to portray that in my artwork. Sadly, that’s another story and we’re currently at the end of this one. I’ll leave you with a picture to prepare you for what could be the next blog (not making promises.)
