The Campers..update

Caracas Complete

I have put the finishing touches on my children skeletons.

The Festival p. 2

P art 2.
I'm currently reading Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano". Very interesting, and relevant to my current stream of artwork!

Newestest Painting In Progress.

S ingle sitting stage (2 hours in..?ish). Starting to recognize some familiar characters.

Can Gods celebrate Día de los Muertos?

Sketching the Strange

I made a few things up in the drawings, as you can probably observe. I'm not sure whether I'm going to do more than these four, in this particular way. These were all loose and quick, made on the same night. I used a combination of watercolor, oil pastels, pencil crayon and graphite on yellowish paper ( I don't know the term for it). I want to move on to something a little more ambitious, and  have begun a larger drawing, with masked characters filling a festival-type space.

Let us put on your closet.

I decided that I would take a few of my own reference pictures to draw from, and dressed my very accommodating roommate in many layers of things, and took a bunch of pictures. Good thing she has so much clothing.

... and here is what I have drawn from it:

... more to come!

God

F or my next drawing project, the assignment is God. In keeping with my focus on costumes, masks and festivals, I will be taking inspiration from various african costumes, from Nigeria and Calabar South such as these:

You can see the rest of them are at the Life Magazine website... I can't find the link at the moment.
They are also similar to the "soundsuits" that artist Nick Cave creates:

Dancing Skeleton Update

30x40 oil on canvas

W hile working on my most recent painting, I was referred to another painter of skeletons from the late nineteenth century, James Ensor. Ensor (April 13, 1860 – November 19, 1949) was a Flemish-Belgian painter and printmaker, and produced a wide array of fantastic, funny and rather strange paintings throughout his lifetime. I was instantly inspired by his paintings, and can particularly relate to his bizarre sense of humour and punchy use of colour. Here are a few examples of his work:

The last painting I have included, above, is the the immense "The Entry of Christ into Brussels", probably Ensor's most famous work. In this composition, which elaborates a theme treated by Ensor in his drawing "Les Aureoles du Christ" of 1885, a vast carnival mob in grotesque masks advances toward the viewer. Identifiable within the crowd are Belgian politicians, historical figures, and members of Ensor's family. Nearly lost amid the teeming throng is Christ on his donkey; although Ensor was an atheist, he identified with Christ as a victim of mockery. The piece, which measures 99½ by 169½ inches, was rejected by Les XX and was not publicly displayed until 1929.After its controversial export in the 1960s, the painting is now at the J. Paul Getty Museum and is on display at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. Also known as Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889, it is considered "a forerunner of twentieth-century Expressionism."

Hmm... skeletons.