I like it.
I spent two years painting this canvas.
Why did it take so long?
Full disclosure: I don't know anything about painting or the process of creating a piece like this but 200 hours seems like an awfully long time for a single painting.
I'm not trying to be disrespectful, just honestly curious!
@mikeeegeee: Well it's better than spending 440 hours on Garry's Mod... errr... not that I've done that...
I really like your whimsical style. I sure hope that your friend likes it because that should totally be displayed.
@mikeeegeee said:
Time well spent? Probably not. No, it wasn't a constant stream of work over the span of two years, but I'm sure the hour total is somewhere between 200 and 300 hours. It's the only thing of its size and scale I've ever attempted, and it will be the only painting of this magnitude that I attempt for at least a few more decades.
I hesitate to call it done, because when I look at it, I can't help but see areas that I could make better. At some point, though, I figure you've just gotta move on. I created this at the behest of a friend who commissioned it.
And to provide a sense of scale, here's me holding it:
Before anyone rails on me for wasting two years on a canvas that, from an artistic standpoint isn't that good, I'll save you the time: I know. Still, it was an educational experience on a number of levels, and it's cool to say that I worked on something for the span of two years. Hopefully you dig it.
Who said from an artist standpoint its not good? Fucking love the sun/sky up in the corner.
That is pretty awesome. You should sell prints down here in New Orleans. You can make some money. ^__^
You should be really proud of that. You attempted something hard and you followed through. Nice work.
Wow, good lord the response here has been overwhelming to say the least. I didn't expect responses to be this positive or even make it off the first page, and here I am with all of you lending me some staunch reaffirmation in what I'm doing. I'm truly humbled that each of you took it upon yourselves to post here, and I hope the canvas brought some element of joy/whimsy/beauty/whathaveyou into your day. You have my gratitude, Giant Bomb.
@BeachThunder: Thanks for the tip! I looked into Reg and I really like his work.
@JammyJesus said:
I kind of want to hug it. I don't know why.
Delightful! That's exactly what I was going for.
@StrikeALight: David Hockney is really cool. The painting I'm working on currently kind of reminds me of some of his photography :P
@TekZero said:
Great job! But I question the need for the 8/10/2011 mark on the painting. I'm not sure it flows well with the rest of the work.
I laughed out loud at this.
@twstdsniper: It's acrylic, and my fourth acrylic canvas at that. First time I've tried anything in this style though, what with the brush strokes. I've tried oils before, but I prefer how acrylics behave.
@Claude: You hit the nail on the head. The Dream is one of my favorites! The style drew heavily on three sources: Van Gogh, Rousseau, and Kandinsky.
@Kung_Fu_Viking said:
Why did it take so long?
As shitty as double posting is, I felt this question/response deserved its own post. Turned out I had more to say than I'd figured.
@Kung_Fu_Viking: Well, it took as long as it did for a number of reasons. To even begin to discuss it, I'm going to neglect the "two year" time figure and focus on "200 hours" as it's a more accurate representation. Here's what I learned during this canvas's conception:
- In order to achieve the effect of seeing all of those brush strokes, you need a lot of paint. And not even just lots of paint, you need layers and layers of it. The first coat goes on and is semi-transparent. You're basically mixing the top coat with the color beneath it, which in the early stages is the white of the canvas. As the paint builds up, it becomes more bold, and you can do more with the texture (the brush strokes you see). I had five tubes of paint I used for the entire canvas: black, white, red, blue, and yellow. The black was a smaller tube, because you don't need as much, but the white, red, blue, and yellow were each a quart of paint. By the time I'd finished, I'd emptied the white and yellow quarts and used half of the blue quart. That's a lot of paint.
- Because of how the paint needs to be layered in order to achieve thickness/texture/value, I'd say I painted all 15 square feet of this canvas five times. And that's a really conservative estimate since I know some areas I went over as many as eight times (most of the green space). So you're not just painting the huge thing once, you're painting it several times. It's enough to drive you fucking bananas.
- Finally, just the sheer size of it, both spatially and temporally. In any two hour painting session, I could usually hope to cover an area of 6inches x 6inches and bring it to a place where I felt satisfied leaving it. Then, and here's the real kicker, since I progressed so slowly over the scale of the whole canvas, my style would change as time went on. I mean, my technique was visibly different during the second year. Consistency became something I struggled with routinely, to such an extent that I had to repaint a lot of areas so that they'd mesh stylistically with the rest of the canvas.
Thanks for your question. I know that's maybe more of an answer than you were bargaining for, but for having lived every waking second of it, I've thought a lot about it. Typing this out actually had a sort of cathartic effect on me, who'da thought?!
Great job man, it is far better than anything I could do. If I were to buy it though I would ask that you paint over the dog, it just seems out of place to me for some reason.
I might be in the minority on that though, keep it up anyhow!
@mikeeegeee: Thank you for the answer, it was exactly what i was hoping for! I like learning things.
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