Overkill

Take a look at this.



There is a lot going on.

Here’s the sketch. Much more toned down.



My whole goal with this blog is to provide myself with some sort of forum to expose my “art” (for lack of a better word—I don’t really consider what I do to be ART art.) to the world. It’s been a while since I’ve flexed my creative muscles, and now that I’m married with a baby, it’s a little hard to get out on a regular basis. Plus we are a 45-minute drive from civilization. So I need somewhere to air out the musty corners of my brain.

If I were still in college I would have had critique to rely on. If you don’t know anything about critique, I’ll fill you in a little bit. It’s basically where everyone in the class presents an image, usually part of an assignment, for the rest of the students to discuss. Critique can be brutal. Once I saw a professor take a student’s work from the wall and throw it in the trash, then turn around and tell the student that a career in art wasn’t for them. Ouch. It never happened to me, thank goodness—I probably would have died of embarrassment.

The good thing about critique is that people point out things that you may not have noticed yourself. Even the act of talking to others about your own work helps improve it. Hence the existence of this blog.
So, let’s talk about this thing.



Please excuse the drip of wet glue. Obviously I haven't finished this thing yet.

By the way, the scans and photos I took of this thing really don’t do justice to how incredibly bright the colors are. It’s acrylic paint on paper and canvas.

Now, for the things I like.

The colors are vibrant. The composition is basically successful, in my opinion. I love the way the water turned out.



And not so great:

1. It’s on canvas. I think this would have been way better on hardboard or even just paper.

2. The clouds are weird. I can’t even really put my finger on it. I think they are just too contrasting with the sky or something. Too much white. I don’t know. Originally I thought the white would provide a nice break from all the color but with all the squiggly lines, I think they just compete too much with everything else that’s
going on.

3. Obviously I did NO editing of the color WHATSOEVER. I have a bit of an explanation. Literally just a few minutes before I had gone to the art supply store and found a tube of silver paint. Then I found a tube of MAGENTA paint and of COURSE I had to try them both out. The silver paint turned out really hard to control. I love the magenta, though.

Anyway, I wish I had just picked at least one thing and toned it down. It could have been making the sky all one muted color, making the whales not so silver, or even doing away with the layering effect of the waves, but I kind of liked that.

That said, maybe the saccharine brightness of this whole thing suits some people and I think that this piece could even be cute in a kid’s room.

There’s my little critique of myself. It feels good to know that nobody can rip this off my wall and stuff it in the trash. And I don't mean to break your heart but I've got to end this because my boy just woke up.