Worked on car details. The colouring just doesn’t seem rusty enough but that can be enhanced later with an orange glaze. Started the ball-of-wool eyeball which seems to anchor the composition nicely.
 
Next will be roughing in the foreground a little to work that into the overall scheme. I know it looks like little progress since the last entry but things are moving along…
 

Things are slowly taking shape. I worked some more on the smoke clouds. The face is a little off on the right hand side. I don’t know if I like it being so noticeable and think it will look better re-worked and a little more subtle.

 
I also worked a little on defining some detail on the basket. It still needs more attention. Maybe a thin glaze of yellow on the highlight side and some magenta on the shadow side. I think my perspective is out of whack on the handle as well…

 
I also started to build up the colour on the car and give it some more detail and contour. I’m thinking know I’d like it to be corroded in spots, and have rusty trails dripping down at certain points. I think a nice rusty stain down from one eye socket would look cool. It would give the impression of a tear. I’ve also started to work more detail into the wolf.

 
Looking at everything in general the one neglected spot is still calling out for my eyeball of yarn in the bottom left. I really want to get the meat wheels right too, so I’ll have to get some reference images to make it look convincing. I actually can’t wait to get to Little Red but she needs to sit tight until I work out her background. As for the teeth on the skull/car? I still haven’t figured that out…

The painting is coming along as expected. I have to build up the thin layers of paint until a rich, full colour is attained. After focusing on the sky which is essentially the background, I moved toward the central figures, the sheep and the wolf. It occurred to me that the sheep is in a kind of masculine position if its location is construed as that of a mounting mate. Weird, because the car would then be in the female position, leaving the wolf in the womb of the car as some kind of perverse offspring. This is the crap that goes through my brain while I’m working on a piece. I never intended on this but there it is for someone to detect, if they’re tuned into that sort of interpretation.
 

 
The sheep could be pretty dynamic as a compositional figure because of the high-contrast from shadow to the highlights of the whiteness of its wool. I think it’s going to have  a lot of punch. The contrast of the smoke cloud in the background has also started to show some dramatic effect. I also think the candy-striped chimney is really going to pop and will add to the playful thematic contrast of  light (happiness factory and cloud) and dark (decay, deception) imagery. The cloud needs at least another layer of paint and then I’ll start working in the little smiley face elements and sharpening some of the chimneys.
 
The wolf has eyes without pupils, which lend to a sort of demonic appearance. The ambiguity of the sheep’s gaze also works for me. Is he freaked by the wolf, the skull, the meat or the eyeball in yarn (which has yet to be drawn in)? I always enjoy that kind of uncertainty because it will feed both sides of an interpretation, positive or negative.
 
I still haven’t given much thought to the ground and how to handle texture, colour or detail. I’ll keep it in mind as I go and will try to integrate it with the rest of the composition. I did just now think of molten slag, cooled and hardened into a sort of globby mass…we’ll see…
 

I roughed out a photoshop version of an eyeball in a ball of wool. I think it will work in red to balance Red Riding Hood.
 
I think it should be looking back into the centre of the painting or maybe over to Little Red….creepy.
 

Once the board had the roughed-in drawing, the whole thing gets a coat of primer, the cheaper the better. Thin primer allows the penciled image to show through and I can lay down the under-paint with the pencil drawing as a guide.
 
I re-paint certain details from the drawing in dark umber colours and give a little volume to some of the shapes. I may work this up a little at a time, adding other colours as I go…
 

 
The under-paint is like a scheme, determining where the colours go and what colours work best. I already decided I wanted purple shadowed smoke with a golden highlight. Little Red is obviously red so with those absolutes I have to consider how to make an interesting composition with those colour markers to work around. I think I’d like the sky kind of pale blue-green which will contrast nicely with the smoke. I’m just going to rough-in the colour and continue to build the intensity as I go.
 

 
 
 
A thought came to me in a little scribble. An eyeball entwined with wool… Playing on the saying “pulling the wool over ones eyes”.
 
I like how this fits with the sheep, the idea of deception and I just think it’s a really cool image, maybe.
 

I could stick it in the bottom left hand corner of the painting…hmmm
 
 
 

Forget all the Freudian, symbolic hogwash for a second and think in terms of fairy tale mythology. Little Red Riding Hood, in most versions, is a tragic tale. She pays the price for not heeding her mother’s warnings and aside from being eaten by the wolf, her foolishness condemns Granny to the same fate. This tale probably evolved as a parable to warn children about straying from the path to avoid the dangers that lurk in the unknown. Strange that today, we admire those who stray from the path, courageously make their own destiny by ignoring the warnings of their timid elders and succeed in defying the odds. Except this isn’t completely true. We admire only those who succeed, and invariable avert our attentions away from the failures, which out-number the successes manifold. Western culture loves a rebel and probably accounts for the saccharine version of Little Red most often told today, in which Little Red miraculously survives by either outwitting the wolf or by being extracted from the gut of the wolf by the woodsman. Either way, here she is in my painting/drawing.
 

Obviously linked to the “wolf” in the wolf in sheep’s clothing aphorism she becomes a kind of witness to the central activity in the composition. The see-saw has a metronomic kind of time-keeping presence and as well the quality of a device of comparative measure as in it’s similarity to a scale.  In this sense Red is being evaluated comparatively to her goodies, and for the time being, seems to outweigh its value, which I’m sure the wolf would concur. The phantom pivot or fulcrum seems to be the decaying car (approximately where the engine would be) so it follows that humanity outweighs any commodity in this situation of mechanical rot. OK, I’m making this up as I go now, but it sounds convincing, no?
 
Little Red will introduce some needed colour to the bleak content. The clouds of smoke as well can be pretty dynamic if handled properly. I’m thinking of early morning clouds bathed in golden sunlight on one side and shadowed in deep purple on the other. I guess the sheep skin can get a bit of similar treatment. The reds of the meat wheels will offset Little Red somewhat and the car seems to be a dark rust colour in my mind (at this point anyway).
 
I primed the board right over the initial drawing. The lines still show throuh and on this I will begin the under-painting, beginning in burnt umber hues and slowly introducing colour. I still need to consider areas that have been unresolved and think some idea will come while the painting is under way….

So the drawing begins to take shape on the board. The wheels on the car have turned into steaks with bones as the hub caps. The butterflies have turned into happy faces, fitting in better with the happiness factory idea. The see-saw made the final cut and is integrated as a kind of phantom playground object with Little Red Riding Hood on one end and her basket of goodies on the other. I’ve roughed in a nose in the sky and think he’ll be breathing in a smiley face…
 
There are still some unresolved areas but I am itching to get to the painting and those unanswered questions will work themselves out as I go.
 

Everything that has been proposed so far seems a little dark, foreboding and maybe too negative, aside from the scraps of humour that may already be lost under this austere cloud. Speaking of clouds, I thought of tempering the harshness with a factory spewing smoke into the air, not evil pollution of the apathetic-corporate-stereotype kind, but rather a benign smoke of happiness and beauty. The kind of smoke that would emanate from factories in My Little Pony land, full of cotton candy, stars, hearts and butterflies…
 
The message here is two-fold. Aside from the metaphor of the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” which generally is construed as a deception, a con, a put on, pulling the wool over – there is also the con of the factory, which echoes the “responsible” corporation, one that touts an environmental stewardship but dumps waste into the river when no one’s looking. Appearances can be deceiving.
 
My thoughts about the old man with the see-saw through his mind are not making sense with the composition so far. There are some areas of the composition that need attention, areas A, B and C on the image below. Area A calls out for more symbolic decay. Area B may be a good spot for the “nose memory” image, a nose tooting up all the magic smoke. C could be a good spot for a sort of interlocutor, an innocent planted in the chaos. Maybe a play on Little Red Riding Hood?
 

I think the basic concept for the painting has taken shape. It may go in a different direction once I get started but it has a structure to build from and all the embellishments will dangle off of this core idea. Next step will be the initial drawing on the board which I will post in it’s various stages of completion. I usually allow for more ideas to be added once the painting has begun but a foundation concept is where I need to start from.

I think the car has morphed into a meat car (sorry Lady Gaga). At the wheel is the wolf and he’s is devouring the vehicle. The deconstructed commentary here is interesting because it echoes the concerns often put forth by environment groups, ecologists, conservationists etc. regarding depleting  resources and shrinking habitats. The wolf is devouring his mode of transport (though I don’t think he’d get far in a meat car) and more importantly his shelter, his environment. The deception (sheepskin) now becomes his tenuous shelter, which I love. The idea that a deception can take on a beneficial role is just crazy!
 
I had previously mentioned the potential of including memory as a component and just moments ago I came across a note of mine that said “memory nose”. The power of the sense of smell as a potent link to memory is well documented. Perhaps there is something there…
 
I also had the idea of a see-saw balancing through an old man’s forehead (see the picture for a previous post labelled “little sparks”). The idea of balance and the objects facilitating this balance come into question. The thought occurred that on one end could be an object fixed in time, for example a young child, and at the other end, the object at another point in time, an old person. In this way an interesting play on time and memory could be plotted. I also like the playful notion of unrelated objects being linked by the see-saw, forcing the gamma wave brain functions to amplify. Why is that chocolate cake on one side and a telephone on the other? Why??? One thought I’m also warming to is that the objects be bisected halves of the same object. The first thought was an upper torso on one end, up in the air, and the lower torso on the low end. I like the detached, disembodied duality that hearkens to the mind/body paradox. Clearly we infer that the legs have a “mind” of their own in a situation as absurd as this. I love the unsettling nature of a character forced into confronting themselves, whether psychological or in this case physical as well.
 
God, I have to start on the real sketch soon, this digital one is making me mental!
 

Normally while I am finishing a piece I am formulating  my next project in my head. Since I need to keep busy, one painting follows another in an endless chain. For this project I am midway through a current painting (commission portrait of Frida Kahlo) and am documenting my ideas for the forthcoming painting in public on this blog. It kind of forces me into a weird spot because once thoughts are typed down they obtain a certain concrete reality that is normally only a shapeless little storm cloud in my head. In that sense, what I write may be miles away from what I paint or may be very faithful to my words. I’ve often wondered how much influence J.K. Rowling’s film versions of her books had on her subsequent stories in the Harry Potter series. It’s kind of a strange notion that someone else’s interpretation of your work could influence your future work. I kind of feel like that’s where I’m at right now because my “literal” self, which is my fictional self since I’m no writer, is informing my “artistic” self. I’m trying to be true to my thoughts as they roll out but finding it difficult to track since I’m not always at a computer and things that may be important may not get recorded. I guess I asked for it….

I think I’ve arrived at a core or central image, the rotting car seems to be stuck in my mind so I will build on it. My “wolf in sheepskin” is starting to force itself on me and the rotting car for that matter. I think the sheep is going to take a prominent position just behind the car. I want the sheep to be animated, not just a skin, as if it still has a perspective on the world in spite of being the shell of the “wolf”.
 
The “wolf’ is now a point of consideration…will it be a literal wolf, figurative wolf or purely symbolic? I think the role of a menacing, threatening entity is the reflexive, obvious response but I also wonder about turning the stereotype upside-down. A sheep in sheep’s clothing?

Sketched a rotting car. Looks cartoonish, but rather that than too slick. I like the realm of the so-called “uncanny valley”, where images have a real enough quality about them but also an unsettling detachment from photo-reality. Otherwise why not just take photos and use photoshop?
 
Thinking also about the “wolf in sheepskin”. I love the look of sheepskin and how wildlife painters can nail this so convincingly – I have to look around for some examples to study. Good old google images.
 
I think I will start sketching the car onto the board and see where that leads me…
 

Some context: I live in a community that builds cars. My brother builds them, I know dozens of people who build them, it’s part of our culture. Although I live in Canada, the influence of Detroit (the so-called auto capital of the world which is just across the river) is inescapable. The slow death of the industrial age has impacted Detroit like no other city. It is a city in decay.
 
Enter the theme of decay. I’m intrigued by it’s potential as a commentary anchor. It could relate directly to the things everyone sees or maybe more subtly, almost psychological, on a level that only enters the mind as a concept. My initial thoughts are to use it very graphically. Like a decaying car, decomposing into its skeletal framework. I think this imagery could be a good focal point to build around.
 
For some other reason, I was listening to Amon Duul II’s Tanz der Lemminge, and their line in cartoonish-German-English accent “wolf in sheep clothing” struck me as very funny because of the delivery and yet very visual. I started envisioning the skeletal car obscured by a sheep skin, deceptively hiding the truth of its decay. Maybe some evil force also lurks below the skin?
 
Last night I got an email from a fellow artist, Danah, who was exhibiting in a gallery I co-own, along with myself and others. She wondered if I had ever done any paintings with “memory” as a key component. Specifically, I haven’t, so that got me thinking about memory. The first thought is Dali’s Persistence of Memory, but that image is so iconic it would be too obvious for me to just plug it into my work. Maybe it would be more interesting to integrate some kind of memory component into a character or subject in the painting. Now I have Pink Floyd lyrics populating my head “The memories of a man in his old age, are the deeds of a man in his prime”. Maybe an old man reflecting….
 
I just realized as well, that decay is a form of representing memory. The decomposing object harkens in shape and form to its former self, hence a sort of memory-link to the past. Hmmm…

Blastoff!
 
The intention of this series of postings is to document the creative process, from the germination of the initial idea that tips the scale and forces me to create, all the way to the conclusion (the work of art) with all the steps and missteps in between. It will be a kind of chronological journal.
 
At this point I don’t have any direction. All I have is the cumulative jumble of ideas that have collected in my head, waiting to congeal and squeeze their way into shape in oil paint. Having just completed a painting based on the The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” for a show entitled “Under the Influence of Music” and currently working on a commission piece for a fellow artist, which at her request, is to be a portrait of Frida Khalo, I give my most recent “artistic” frame of mind some context.
 
Before I get into it I want to thank Sabina for agreeing to indulge me on this project and hopefully I can shed some interesting light on my creative process…