First Dragon of the Year...

Little Rose Dragon
(Oil, 6x8") Price: $200.00 SOLD

I've been needing to do some small paintings to add to my display at Boskone Art Show next month in Boston. I already had the rocket ideas and such, but I also needed to refamiliarize myself with my paints again...to become confident in spashing about the paint again... As the years go by, I find that it's like riding a bicycle: you never really forget... Anyway, I had some dragon drawing lying around the place from previous projects, so I thought I'd practice on those. Above is this weeks effort: 'Little Rose Dragon'.

Doing this painting in oil has been eating at me for awhile. I had previously executed it in acrylic and prismacolour pencil on Illustration Board - and I'd never been fully happy with it in that medium. That painting had never sold either, for one reason or another. However, I decided to clear the decks by giving the old version to a dear friend for Christmas and promply set up my miniscule easel to re-attempt the painting in oil.



This is the work in progress. The easel is only about 12 inches tall. The best thing about it is that the upright post and foot pieces allow me to upend the painting and do fine detail that I would normally have to be a contortionist to paint. On larger works this is a problem, but I get around it. In this photo, the easel is sitting on my disposable pallete, under my right hand lamp. I use natural colour light globes in my two lamps: it helps smooth out the light and shadow in my small painting corner.

This is the original drawing for 'Rose Dragon', executed on hand tinted drawing paper. In a previous post I told you all about 'Nick Paper'. The pencil is Prismacolour 'Sienna' or 'Red Earth' I think. And of course, no drawing of mine done on 'Nick Paper' is complete without the red Kanji stamp - the symbol is Japanese for 'Ma'.

So, the new 'Little Rose Dragon' painting is done in the same palette and brushes as for 'Escape Velocity' - there's just a difference in emphasis.

Anyway, I'm off to paint something new, so check back again soon...
Cheers,
Marianne

Escape Velocity...a new painting!

Escape Velocity
(Oil, 14x18") Price: $450.00 SOLD

I had the idea for this painting while in Denver last September. I'd picked up this little blank paged booklet at a previous convention in Memphis, TN a few months before, and been carrying it around for ages. Every so often I'd get an idea and scribble down a thumbnail for it along with some notes. This is the result of one of those scribbles.

It took me a while to work out the robot design as I'm not good at working up technology with out some kind of clue of what I'm doing. So I borrowed one of the little articulated robots that I got my hubby for Christmas and set him up under a light under the Christmas tree for a photo shoot. It's all about the pose and foreshortening. Anyway, the robot was Black Ox - a Japanese one - and my design looks nothing like him. The model was completely black with two big horn/cone things sprouting from his temples...and well, my robot doesn't... But it served the purpose.

It took two sessions to paint this one, and I think I can safely say that I've achieved my goal.

The palette included: Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, a little Permanent Rose, Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow Light, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Cadmium Red Light, and Cobalt Violet. Brushes were the usual array of big flats, small Filberts, and some little pointy Rounds. Oh, and the big fluffy blending brushes - two of them!


These are the two thumbnails I scribbled out when this idea struck.

















This was the last of three sketch ideas for my robot that I spent a recent Sunday drawing up. I liked this one the best. I also liked poring over some of our pulp SF magazine art in our reference books. In the end, I created my own robot. Hope you like him...


More paintings to come. I'm currently working on a little dragon painting...stay tuned.
Cheers,
Marianne