Experiments With Actual Paint
[Photos c) Allison R. Sly etc.]
I like painting, but I'm the first to admit I'm not very good. Still, it's a lot of fun, although usually I get
bogged down in odd details- I have several paintings from art classes when I basically ignored the assignment and
instead concentrated on trying to get the sky the exact right mix of blues. Exact to what, I'm not sure (it was
a while ago) but I obviously had some goal in mind, judging from the progression of paintings.
At any rate, I rarely drag out my brushes, but when I do, it's usually well less than a day before I'm done. I have
far more patience for pencil work than I do for paint.
White Dragon (tempera on canvasboard)
This is part or a set of two, although I never liked the other one as well so I didn't bother to put it up. The dragon
isn't painted; I painted around a faint penciled outline instead. Sadly, the change of colors down the length of it
doesn't really show up well at all in the photo. The faint dark spots are mildew; I left it in a closed room
for an excessive amount of time.
Anubis (tempera on ass-backward canvas)
This is a copy of a Egyptian tomb painting, and as I recall it's more or less to scale. I don't know offhand what the
hieroglyphs mean, but I would assume that they're a passage from the Book of the Dead. This is the only painting I've ever
done where I have to opportunity to assemble the frame and stretch and attach the canvas, which I remember as being a lot of fun.
I put the canvas on backwards
deliberately, because I thought the untreated side felt more like papyrus. It was quite fuzzy, though, so getting anything
approximating a straight line was a bear. Again, the photo suffers from my lack of photography skills;
the dark yellowish stuff is gold paint, and the actual yellow and oranges aren't quite that bright and hideous.
| Anubis - Detail of Tomb Painting |
East of the Sun, West of the Moon (tempera on canvasboard)
I did this what seems like eons ago, but I still like it fairly well.
It's an illustration from the fairy tale of the same name, which is one of my favorites. The heroine has to actually do a bit
of work for a change- I never did like the ones where just sitting around and keeping your mouth shut got you happiness.
Notable for the ice castle in the background and my complete inability to paint faces.
Raven (tempera, ink, gouache, and oils on canvas)
This is the most recent, circa something like two years ago. It's not done yet; I intend on painting an outline of a
raven's skeleton over it at some point. It was done half with brushes and half with my fingers, as you can probably tell,
and is thus practically three-dimensional in places. It took almost four months to dry. There are touches of gold ink
on his heart and feathers- I took a picture with flash so it stood out a little, although I think over all it looks better
in the non-flash pic.
As messy as it is, I quite like how this turned out.
