Are there specific items here that have significant meaning to you? DUE: FEB 28TH
Obscure Sticky Vinyl
For the past few months I have been using a material that is a bit unique to my painting process and it is a material called - "I'm currently not giving that name out." I know, I know and I fully intend for Peggy (and everyone else) to chuckle and perhaps roll her/their eyes when she/they read this but.... I will describe it though. It is an adhesive vinyl that I paint on and then cut into particular shapes, most recently "Meat Pods" or large bulbous forms, but I have made a few more recognizable shapes with this material. Below is a pic of what it looks like in raw form. It comes in a variety of sizes and sticks to many types of surfaces.
"Super Me"
This is a self portrait created on sticky decal vinyl and exhibited most recently at Murray State University.
I find this material to be a fantastic departure in the way that I think about my paintings. It is not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination to use shaped canvases or decals. I have made shaped images in the past that have had something to do with Elizabeth Murray or even Frank Stella. The way I am using this new material though, I think, has more to do with the way street artists use paste and paper. It doesn't just simulate a wall drawing because there is a new surface, and the new surface is at once textured with brush strokes but also has the slick texture of the vinyl. I have just recently started merging these decals with wall drawn elements and I am sure I will be posting some of those images relatively soon.
When the edge of the canvas is gone and the rectangle or square extends to the entire wall or in some cases the entire room, the viewer experiences the painting in a very different way. As in "Super Me", the painting is about the same size as the viewer and in that way, there is a sense that you are occupying the same metaphorical space. Whatever this pathetic and ill equipped super hero is about to engage with, you are too.
Sketchbooks
When it comes to sketchbooks, I fully realize they are not unique to my process but they are exceedingly important to my process so I will take a minute to talk about them. Sketchbooks seem to be very important to most of the 2-D artists I know and also important to a fair amount of 3-D artists. I think it has something to do with ideas in real time, not labored over (necessarily) but fresh and raw. Like a drawn version of not just and idea but actual visual thinking. I encourage my students to include everything they are working on. I include the scratch math from my home refinance. There is a great page from one of Andrew Wyeth's sketchbook of a drawing on a page where he had added a column of numbers. You can't help but wonder where are those numbers coming from or did he do the drawing first and then the math or the other way around?
I use my sketchbooks primarily for thumbnail planning, (examples). But they also become a stand in for ideas that haven't matured yet or a way of creating a visual outline of all of the complexity of thought. I constantly go back through my sketchbooks and I don't judge. It is important with a sketchbook (for me) to not think of them as "drawings." They do not have a preciousness of any kind. In this way I can make them without analyzing them - and get my ideas down.
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| My Bob Ross official palette knife. |
I would have to say that the studio item that I have had the longest is my Bob Ross palette knife. I have had this thing since I started painting. I bought it from a guy who sold paint out of his house and he had this sitting on a shelf on clearance. I bought it because it looked study and and had a nice round handle. When I originally bought it, in mid 90's, it had the Bob Ross logo on the handle.
It looked something like this. Though it might have been a bit different, I don't recall exactly but after a few years it started to rub off. Over the years and many layers of scraped on and off paint, palettes cleaned and knife not washed, Bob's face has long since gone the way of the dodo. I still use this knife more than any other though the edge is like a razor now from constant use, I'm sure I will keep using this knife as long as it holds together and when it finally craps out, I will probably try to find another Official Bob Ross palette knife.
Don't forget to check in with Peggy and Joe!
Next week: Do you work on one project at a time or several? How do you come up with titles?
DUE: MARCH 7TH