If Your Baby More Fat, Order More Size: Part I

When I removed the fast food-shaped 'dialog' portions from my 'dialog pieces', I was left with several canvases that already had a fair amount of history on them (which was a good thing).  Now it's time to build on top of that with another layer of imagery.

The early stages of adding color.

A couple detail shots.

At this point, I'm not completely done with the line work, but my desire to start adding color has overridden the proper 'order of operations' -which is, of course, one of the great things about being an artist, efficiency takes a back seat to whimsy and inspiration.  Plus, in all fairness, I was cranking out a bunch of line work in order to have some new pieces for a possible show which did not materialize, so it is refreshing to my overall mental health to take a quick break from the line work.

Now about the same time as I was adding imagery to this canvas, I had the opportunity to teach a few sessions for Davenport's Creative Arts Academy (to check out more regarding the Creative Arts Academy, please click this link http://www.davenportschools.org/caa/ to go visit their website!).  As a super-duper-ruper bonus, I got to work with my friend and mentor Nick DiGioia!

My students were a group of energetic and motivated 6th graders.  I introduced them to Dadaist collage (in particular, my art heroes: Hannah Hoch, John Heartfield, and Kurt Schwitters).  The students were then instructed to create a collage, redraw that collage (translate it into their own visual language), and then from their collage-inspired drawing, create a painting.

Here is my demo collage....

.....and the drawing I created based on the collage.

A quick shot of Nick DiGioia!

A panoramic shot of the kids at the Figge Art Museum (I had them trapped in the elevator long enough to pull off a panoramic picture).

The collage-inspired drawing now translated into basic shapes on my canvas.  Once the shapes are down, I layout a foundation of yellow to add more lines on top of.  My process of reclaiming this canvas caused me to rip of some of the priming I did earlier.  Painting on unprimed canvas is a general nuisance since the canvas absorbs waaaaaayy too much paint and the lines start to bleed out as well.

Moving forward.

You can see a few areas where the under-images still peek out.

After that layer of paint dried I went back in and added some more interesting colors (my apologies to bile-yellow for implying it was not interesting....)

Once that layer was complete, it was time to add a thin layer of haze to unify the three image layers on the canvas (the top (un-hazed) layer was too dominant, yet pointless in its emphasis).  I threw in some orange because Zaiga said so.

Next time we visit this piece, we may be looking at a fortress and/or a cowboy head silhouette.  I make no promises.