Dour Drawing for a Dour Day

Raw Stage

A new painting I'm titling "Schadenfreude". Yes, my titles end up on little banners in the paintings, but I don't find the redundancy stultifying, I find it funny. The bird on the right is a Dodo, and the hocks of meat come from my meat catalog a few posts back. The portrait is a grotesque doe-eyed variation on self-portrait. That's all for now. I like my raw stages.

Maria Trip and the Eider Duck

Bird Drawings

New Painting: Better Materialists

These are studio shots of my newest piece just completed yesterday. I switched grounds which accounts for the change in surface and some of the jewel tone of the colors. I have just been looking for a great deal of time at these antique portraits and my "portraits" of food and deer trophies, it was high time they were drawn together.

Real Live Cabinet of Curiosities

Found this through Personism, a great story about a daughter sorting through her father's legacy.

Better Materialists

This is a rough scan of the drawing I've been working on off and on today. If you want to see it well, click on one or the other sides to get a better view. The panel is too big for the scanner bed which creates some weird shadows and breaks when scanning, but this gives the general idea. I've been trying to focus on the portraits within the still life settings to a greater extent in this outing. I have also begun considering my deer mount/trophy a portrait as well. I hope to paint this and several more panels like this in the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to color after working almost exclusively in my earth palette. I will post the final work when I finish it.

Source Material

I've been mining the antique store for source materials for the paintings I'm working on, and I've been CHARMED by 1950s era cookbooks. I love the faded color printing, and I absolutely love the idea that the 1950s era housewife might need to be instructed on the types of cuts of meat or the uses of cheese. How fabulous! These have migrated into the underdrawing to be posted later today. Hope you enjoy a little slice of the studio!

Aging Trophy Wife

Timid Starlet

Casual Installation and My New Antique Deer Mount

I got myself an 8-point buck from the Waltham Antiques Co-op on Felton Street. He was shot in 1922, but he's still in great shape, the plaque bears the name of his hunter. I've been looking for a model for my deer paintings for quite a while. It is intriguing to finally have some taxidermy of my own. I think it improves the paintings. Meanwhile, in the studio, I've been hanging my little baby skulls and portraits together into a kind of ring of icons or trophies. I like the result and I'm looking forward to growing the grouping of little oil paintings ranging from 2 x 3.5 inches to 6 x 6 inches. I'm loving the way the limited palette gets heightened by the smallest inclusions of bright transparent orange earth in the deer mount.

Daily Trophies

Deer Mount

Friends

Fresh

I'm in my home studio husband and I have taken to calling the tree house, as it overlooks this giant beech tree. On every windowsill are little skull paintings ranging in size between 2x3 inches to 6x6 inches. This is a 5x5 inch painting I was particularly pleased with today. Hope you enjoy, its still a touch wet on the scanner glass.