The Next Phase For Imminent Departure

Do you remember Mr. Anthropomorphic Value-Sized Tasty Beverage?

Perhaps this will refresh your memory?

By adding Mr. Anthropomorphic Value-Sized Tasty Beverage to the piece Imminent Departure (and his accompanying text), I made the piece visually too heavy on the bottom half for what I had thought I was going to add on the top half.  So now I have to 'go back to the drawing board' and develop a new top half to the piece.

Here's the top layer as it unfolds.

This guy might look familiar.....

All said and done, I only added 5 elements (2 of which are on the bottom half) to the piece.

The greens are all in place, now all I need to do is add white in some select areas.

After living with this piece for an extended period of time, I realize that it needs something a little more visually dominant to kind of anchor the piece (emphasis, dominance, and proportion).  I will probably need to contemplate the addition of at least a partial new layer of imagery if not an entirely new top layer.  Time to haze over this layer and go consult the sketch book.........

The haze layer seems to be ineffective, I suspect something a bit more drastic will have to happen to Imminent Departure to bring it to a satisfying resolution.  This could get a bit messy...

Forward the hands of time a bit*...

Previously unrelated to this piece, I have had the growing desire to make a tower/Rapunzel-themed piece.  As I was contemplating what might go into a tower/Rapunzel-themed piece, I realized I would want/need a character at the bottom of the tower/composition looking upwards.  That little realization made me think about the dude I had just recently attached to the bottom of Imminent Departure...

But first I needed to make a tower-esque structure for the top half of the composition.  Before I even did that however I was stuck on the idea that I wanted a one-word 'slogan' to be built into the tower structure.  After trying out several ideas/words, I decided on 'Bait'.  So I dumped out all of my extra/unclaimed carved letter blocks (thanks to a lot of free time and my trusty Dremel Tool) on to the canvas and started to comb through them looking for the right combination of letters.

We have a winner!

We have a tower!

We have a winner in the tower that is attached to the canvas...

Now it's time to deal with the canvas itself.  Over time the stretcher bars have bowed/warped.  This bowing/warping is part of the reason I haven't worked on Imminent Departure for a few years*.  I've needed to re-stretch the canvas on a flat/unbowed canvas.  That time is now.

See how the bottom pops out from the wall?  Not helpful.

Ok, enough of the nuts and bolts stuff, back to dealing with the image/concept.

As I start to play around with the idea behind Rapunzel (maiden trapped in tower in need of rescue by a man), I am also reminded of the story of Sleeping Beauty (and Snow White for that matter...).  Or at least the Disney-fied versions of these stories.  This may require a bit more research...at least now the canvas lays flat against the wall.