Reworking An Old Piece For Dutiful Citizen

While visiting the Portrait of Maquoketa show at The Figge Art Museum recently, I met the artist Rose Frantzen (a link to some of her work HERE!).  She struck up a conversation with me, and much to my surprise (and delight), we sat and spoke (while she painted) for over 4 hours in the museum.

Rose, and her husband, Charles Morris (check out some of his work HERE!) are based out of Maquoketa, Iowa.  They have opened up the MAE (Maquoketa Art Experience) as a gallery, studio, performance and learning center. Check them out (HERE)!  The day that I was chatting with Rose, Charles was busily working on something else in the museum but frequently popped in and out of the conversation.

Just a few days ago, Charles called me up and invited me to have a show out at The Maquoketa Art Experience in May.  At that moment, the show Dutiful Citizen was born......

Since the show is only about a month away, it is unlikely that I will be able to have more than a couple of new works created.  However, it is an excellent excuse to finally go back and repaint an old piece that I felt was never quite right.  That's where Transaction comes into the picture.

Here is Transaction (without its carved frame attached) as it came out of 'the vault'.  

Transaction originally appeared in a show called PLAY at Quad City Arts back in 2010.  Here are a few detail shots.

Some carved wood and mixed media relief elements.

The color scheme clearly needs to be more vibrant and dynamic.  Right now the colors are dull and interact with each other in a lackluster fashion.

Two pirates.  A round Lego-head pirate and the 'Do-You-Have-What-It-Takes-To-Be-An-Artist-Pirate'.

The Lego-head pirate originally was a much brighter yellow (kind of a 'Canary Yellow'), that I am going to return to.  I am also going to light up the background of the 'talk bubble'.  Based on those two colors, I'm going to go back and rework the piece.

One of the interesting byproducts of how a paint (a combination of a flat serigraph and a paint-by-numbers approach) is that all of my shapes have a dark outline/border.  This makes it relatively easy to go into Photoshop and 'pour' different colors into the piece and see how they look.  It's not the same as actually applying paint, but in a few minutes, I can get a rough idea of how some potential different color schemes will interact with each other.

I've already replaced the yellow and a couple other colors, but here are a few examples of color tests just on the outline of the large ship.  Pink-ish.

Bright green.

and a burnt orange color.

The opening reception for Dutiful Citizen will be from 5-7pm on Friday, May 3rd at The Maquoketa Art Experience in Maquoketa, Iowa.  (124 South Main, Maquoketa, Iowa.).

 In the next post, we'll see how the new color scheme(s) unfold.....