KALI continues....

The show is up and the opening was successful beyond what I expected, so I'm going to go back a month plus and start posting more of the process of creating the pieces.

Go back in time to see how the project began and developed to this point, here!

 It begins with painting this green skull triumphantly shelf underneath Kali's big black foot.

The painting sat like this on a background, I had to rework some areas before moving onto the next steps.

 I outlined the figure with a purple I made in acrylic to help hash out the figure amongst the flat black gesso used to fill her in.

 I used masking tape to define the weapons and bowl.

 I created the shape partially in paper and then used it as a guide to mask out the area.

 Then came the new fun skill I experimented with, guilding/leafing. I applied the size and waited the recommended hour plus for it to become tacky to the touch.

 The leaf is super thin and light, the slightest breeze can cost a lot of silver. I gently leafed it in, it only sticks to the guilding resin. I gently burnish it with the back of my fingers.

 I pulled off the tape to reveal the shape of the weapon remaining in silver. I also used a light cadmium hue oil paint directly on the surface to place in some leg bones.

 I worked in the ribs and arm and placed the knee. I left the studio in the wee hours of the morning happy with the progress at this stage of the game.

I do it for you...

My day started out great!
After an early morning coffee and stroll thru the zoo to celebrate my past birthday with my mom, we grabbed a delicious bite of Vietnamese food in Inglewood. I had a friend stop by to share his life woes and then hopped in the shower before heading to work. I prepped my After Effects Class at Quickdraw early, since it is the first day and taught until 9:30. I realize my schedule is a bit weird from here on in. I get off at 9:30. rather than go home, or better yet, go out with friends...... 
I go paint! 

I blocked in some two toned blue radial stripes in the Saraswati background. The colors I am choosing are inspired by the peacock feather I picked up at the zoo today. Saraswati is often depicted with peacocks. I also painted around the edges so that for this exhibition I do not need to frame all the work, that would be extremely expensive and time consuming.

Since I will need to tape off the lines for crisp edges I can only paint every second one, and it's late but I need to get more done. I make a mixture of cadmium's, hookers green, yellows etc to create to green hues for the next radial lines. The implied circle around the goddess is dark going to light which is opposite from the Ganesh painting (to see click here)  which is light to dark.

It is after midnight by the time I'm done on the Saraswati piece. I am feeling dark and finally take the plunge on the Kali piece.  I have been mulling over the next step for this piece and been too timid to just put the paint to the canvas. Now that the leap has begun I am feeling good that it can go forward from here. I intend on painting red bones onto the body and maybe adding a slight highlight onto the form to make it appear less flat. Believe me it took balls to do just this, but now those balls are rolling ;P

It can be really tough keeping my priorities straight.

KALI - beginnings

For those who follow my blog, my previous work on animation was completed successfully. During the process my laptop died and is now being resuscitated at the Apple Genius Bar. So I can't update with anything on that system for a while. However I have had some photos sitting on my iPhone for about a month.

Here is my beginning process on the Kali painting.

I began by selecting which canvas I would be working on, then I did a quick jiffy marker sketch to show the model what we would be attempting to achieve. This led to this.......

I used crosshairs to centralize my image at the belly button. I gridded out some of the area to speed up the process of putting the charcoal drawing down.

Here is the full figure with all four arms drawn on the canvas in charcoal.

In the third studio visit for this piece, I locked down the image with a clear gesso and to limit the spread of charcoal in the paint.

I then blocked in a variety of dark brown tones for the background. Initially I intended on painting the character with green skin to set it off on a warm background, but then things got fun and I went a little further on the background and may be chaining my initial idea, that's what happens with inspiration in the studio.

 I rubbed in more colour, and gold and wet the surface creating a variety of drips and splashes. I am still considering how I will go about the treatment of the flesh, one idea is to paint it very dar and paint bones on top to make her even more frightening. WE will see what happens as the painting unfolds.......