A Moose With A Home! and other progress

I am excited. I feel the need to share. It took me little time to know what I must do. My moose head floating on white canvas now has meaning, he has a home. I could not deny the unintentional resemblance to Found and so I decided to play off of it. I think this painting will be titled Lost; it will be the before to the after. I will translate the ideas and style of Found, which was originally India ink on wooden panel, into oil on canvas. Found lacks life, lacks colour, Lost will be vibrant and bleeding with the last remnants of life left in our moosie friend here. It is a story of the circle of life, and the beauty that can be found in death.

You ready to see some pictures?

 *Note: Found was originally exhibited with an adjoining bed of leaves, and a moose antler leaned against the panel.

What you see here is my under painting. It is the first time I have played with oils since I finished painting the moose a year ago, so I am still getting used to them. The shapes of the trees need to be adjusted. I plan to paint the trees in oil, adding the subtle grain of the wood in mimicry of the wooden panel that Found is done on. It is my intention to use India ink to paint on the stylized black lines, but am not sure how that will take to the oil base. Finally, I am trying to decide whether I would like to paint the leaves on the forest floor, or collage them. I think it will be a game time decision.

In other news...

While waiting for the above painting to dry, I decided it was time to revisit the painting I had to put down for a while. Below is a quote from what I had to say about it when I posted the image to Facebook. I thought it was comical, but true enough to how I feel about my work that it warrants a place here as well:

"We had to "take a break" for a week or two. Sometimes after a big fight you just need some space. I took some time for myself to sort out my feelings, just do other things, so that I could someday return to our relationship with a fresh, new perspective. Thats what you have to do when you're in love, people.

Now we're back together again, and I am proud to say that about 2/3 of what you see here is finished product.

...What else did you think I was talking about? This is love, what you see right here. True love. 'Tis a shame that one day I will have to part with this painting.."

A New Disaster, nearly complete

Oh how I love Photoshop for saving me from the awful colour quality of my cell phone camera's pictures. I got it to be relatively close to the actual hues and tones.The image quality, however, could not be saved so please, I beg of you, refrain from enlarging this photo. It is quite embarrassing. It is sad that I cannot afford to buy a new camera.. perhaps after I sell some paintings...