My best painting

Well. About a month of development and prep and 2 and a half weeks of solid painting in 4-12 hour shifts. This is the biggest painting I've done in over 5 years. I haven't felt this good about a painting in a long time.

I think this is my best piece ever. I usually feel that way about my most recent painting. But this one feels a level up. I want to create a body of work at this level.

It's 24x36 inches. I don't have space for a lot of paintings this size but I really want to work bigger like this.

For the next painting I'm going back to the 8x10 or 11x14 inch range for sure. But hopefully I can do a couple this size or bigger this year.

Before I took the piece to the photographer last night, I put it in its frame and took some pictures.

The photographer, Annie, is going to take some high res photos. She's been doing this for a while so she knows all the tricks to make the black background less reflective and get the colors right etc. 

I met her for the first time yesterday so I was shy about taking pictures and filming. But here's the painting sitting in her studio. No that camera is not the one she'll be using to capture my art. It's what she uses in her fine art photography.

I'll be showing this at the Dark Art Emporium in a group show called the Forbidden Experiment of the Night Womb. The show opens February 3rd.

Programming note: I'll be posting a timelapse video of the entire painting process of this soon. Then I'm going to start working on some other videos that aren't about this painting. The art life and lives and intro to drawing bad art course. Damn I still need to make a mask too.

I took about 500 GBs worth of video of the process of this painting. From the early thumbnail sketches, to the sculpting process, priming the canvas, and then painting. I'll probably make a series of videos about the making of this painting. That will be a future project. 

Happy January 17th Everybody

Last night was the first night I went to bed without this painting on its easel. It was weird. I actually had a hard time sleeping and started worrying about it being okay.

Annie's studio is in San Pedro CA. About an hour drive from my house. 

In addition to her photography practice, she does tango lessons from her studio. 

She has a husky. 

I drove over the Vincent Thomas Bridge to get to San Pedro.  That bridge gives me an eerie feeling. That's the bridge the film director Tony Scott jumped off of in 2012. 

I was never too familiar with his work. But I was going to film school when it happened. I remember a lot of people, especially the older professors were really shaken up by it. One teacher worked with Tony and also lived in San Pedro. So it really hit close to home.

Every time I drive over that bridge I think of Tony Scott and my teacher.

After dropping off my piece at Annie's I went to my friend Jana's apartment. Jana hooked me up with Annie. They're close friends. Jana really wanted to make sure I got this piece properly captured.

We talked art. I can only talk art for a little bit in real life. 

She made a good case for just calling my piece "the cave."

Jana's boyfriend is going to school for composing film/tv music. So I tried to pick his brain about that a little bit. 

He explained a little bit about atonal music and I didn't understand it. 

I like talking music more than art I think.

Have Fun

Goodnight Sweeties