Two New Rockets for the New Year...
Anyway, this is it so far. More on the small portrait next post. Thanks for stopping by.
Cheers,
My name is Marianne Plumridge. I am an artist of mythic fantasy works and fine art images. More of which can be seen at my website, 'MariannePlumridgeart.com', and also my Writing Blog, 'Muse du Jour'. These sites are in the links section of this page. This site began life as a painting a day blog in 2007. However that project has now passed, but I still find myself painting in that way. So this site will now be the showcase my new paintings as inspired by those previous efforts.
"Sirius Crucible" is an 'in-between' design. As in, I needed to use up a bunch of paint fast and wasn't quite sure what to paint. I have a bunch of used sketches and ideas piled up around my painting table, so I sifted through those, looking for inspiration. I found the space station I had used on another past painting and squinted at it and thought that it might make a nice centrepiece to cloud frame in space/nebula 'thang'. So, I drew it down and went at it with the paint, but somehow, I just ran out of inspirational puff and ended up putting it aside for several months. When I was grasping for ideas to draw just recently, I pulled out the half finished canvas again and looked at it. Squinting at the left over paint on my palette, I thought I could experiment with it a bit more. Well, I loved the amber back light and the soft multi-coloured clouds up front and so finished it with a sense of accomplishment. I hate wasting things, even canvases that haven't worked out. However, in adding the rocket and it's tail-fire trail, it also became something unexpected. Some of us see it as a simple space painting, others took one look at it and said they saw a shabby puppy or lion in the gold, with the off sized moons as eyes, and the space station and fire trail as the nose. Admittedly, it took me a while to see it as I was fully focused on the space theme, but when I did, I now can't unsee it. So, the title became 'Sirius Crucible' after the dog-star.
I found a pretty, blue supernova in colours that I love and painted this off the cuff rocket doodle using some of it. All of my space scenes are painted loosely in an impressionist style, so I had a lot of fun daubing and blending blues and purples amidst the black of space on this one. Very serene and luminous in real life.
Yep, lots of made black, and cadmium yellow light, and cadmium orange left on the palette. So, I drew up directly onto the canvas a bunch of positive and negative shapes, and a space station in the lower right corner. Even with the tumbling rocks, the design didn't feel complete, so I added the tiny rocket and its fire trail to tie the two 'halves' of the painting together into a whole. As strange as a design as it is, it now actually works. Pulp space paintings from last century were full of this kind of dramatic and dynamic design work, as the art adorning books and magazines had to draw the eye to sell the product. It's why we have so much gorgeous vintage art that 'thinks outside the box' and inspires, even if the laws of physics have been broken or even twisted and bent into something truly awe-inspiring and challenging. Suspension of disbelief is key, and I hope my little space fantasies can reach even a tiny bit of that inspiring achievement of pulp space artists past.
This is one of the designs from my teeny sketchbook that I doodled awhile back. It's the first time I've painted, let alone drawn such a spindly space station. It was kind of inspired by the spider-like air traffic control 'tower' at LAX airport, in shape. And since the design is light and airy compared to many of my other clunky space stations, this one fit the almost pristine delicacy of the concept of the whitish rings and planet cloudscape below it. Lots of nuance and golden highlights have been lost in photography, but I'm rather proud of fulfilling my vision for this idea. Below, is the page from my sketchbook...fully designed in a 3.5 x 3.5" space. The entries that I draw between the covers of this little book are more complete and 'deliberate' ideas that come to mind and need a little more effort than the 'off the cuff' ones that are more like 'insta-rockets'. Besides, with drawing up designs before hand, I can just scan to canvas size, print out and draw them down, ready to begin adding paint. They also often require more than just one sitting to complete.
Anyway, here ends the current crop of rocket doodles until I post up my annual CHRISTMAS SMALL WORKS SALE 2023 on Sunday 3rd December at 4pm. Come back and take a look. Meanwhile, thanks for stopping by.
Cheers,
Marianne
True Rocket Doodles in my creative world are the ones that come from a 'what shall I paint now?' mindset, usually after I've just completed whatever else I've been working on, large or small. And sometimes, inspiration strikes just right and I'll grab a canvas and start drawing elements on it until I get a working concept or story. These latest few paintings are just that: impromptu, off the cuff, spur of the moment tiny works inspired typically by 'colour combinations', shapes, a singular element from something I've just been working on, or even something amorphous from music I've been listening to or such. Sometimes, the magic is just there when you need it. 'Moon Hopper' was inspired by wanting to play with colour and shape, so I just kept adding elements, starting with the 'Saturn'-like planet as the anchor and finishing up with tiny rocket racing away from the space station. All of the random elements work in this tiny painting and I added and added them until it just felt 'balanced' to me. Then I started in with the paint. I had a lot of fun with this one, and the nostalgia style 'space' that I created in the top right hand corner was the basis for another painting, 'Jagged Edges' which I'll talk about in the next post. Meanwhile, here are some of the other paintings that I created for Illuxcon that were literally not designed, but were more of happy accidents...
'The Narrows' was inspired by a colour scheme I had in mind and a pretty pale rose gold frame I had lying around my studio. A wavy line, draw a rocket on a favourable angle, put in a few moons using a small circle gauge template and off I went. There is something just so soothing noodling wet paint into pleasing shapes and depths.
I've just completed a cover commission painting for a publisher in Australia. I can't reveal what that is just yet, but it was both nerve-wracking and fun at the same time. And of course after that, I had some leftover paint on my palette. There was also an explosion of Permanent Rose since I squeezed the tube BEFORE clearing the blockage in the mouth of the tube...sooooo big spoosh of paint. Sigh. So, I picked up a little canvas, drew some circles for moons and a space station and 'went to town'. So the first little rocket doodle was born. After it dried a little, I decided that it needed a teeny rocket for narrative. Here is the result...
The second little painting was one I had already drawn up from a few months ago. I'd used an idea from my teeny 3" sketchbook. So I popped that canvas onto a small easel and ferreted out the reference that had inspired it. Suffice it to say, it is a space station orbiting inside the rings of an ice/gas giant planet. The space station is a refinery that continuously processes minerals, gases and ice resources for a variety of colonies and nearby inhabited planets. The rocket ship has left the station and is cruising above the outer rings, skimming over the glittering ice chunks, prospecting for a new area to mine. The pilot must be careful not to be blinded by the light reflecting off the ice-steroids, nor become mesmerized by them either, or he and his ship could end up just another casualty among the ancient planetary ejecta. So...
"Prospecting"
(6x8", Oils on Linen, Framed) Price: $300.00 SOLD