The Human Canvas - A Koi Koi Lydia

Lydia

No stranger to these pages, you've seen her 

before in the Human Canvas sessions "The Bra Strap", 

"Shark Diving", "The Belly of the Dragon", and 

"The Bird of Paradise".

This time, 

No stranger to my pens...

A koi.

Kind of a funky looking brand of koi, I must say.

Make that... a couple of funky kinda koi.

Yeah, funky maybe,

But whatever. I kinda like 'em.

And there don't seem to be hard fast rules on 

what these things can 

look like.

And if you DO KNOW that these are NOT koi...

Fine. Let's just call 'em fish, and move on.

Back then to that blend of blues we used on 

Shaelyn, with the session called 

"Drawing on Many Lessons".

Matter of fact, this piece was very similar to "Drawing on Many Lessons" all the way around.

With the flowers...

And leaves...

And pool of water...

This was intentional. This night was filmed, 

so I chose to go with an image I could go forward 

with much faster. Something where I'm not trying to 

decide what's next AS I go.

The film ended up being a bit shaky...

Probably not usable. It's okay. We knew this going into it. 

Plod on then with some detail around the leaves...

The flowers, in and around...

Then just a BIT under the fish...

And then I think we can call it done.

And it made for some really nice photos.

HOWEVER...

Part of the entertainment that evening...was with Willow...

The cat. While I was drawing on Lydia...she was 

playing with Willow. 

And snapping some
wonderful photos along the way. 
This same shoot, zoomed out to include the cat,
 ended up being the next entry. You can find it through
the search window near the top of this page.
Look for "Willow the Hutt". 

It's kind of a nice.

Thanks again Lydia.

And thank YOU for stopping by. See the 

history and development of The Human Canvas through 

the tabs near the top of the page.

And I AM always looking for the next canvas.

Finally... A CANVAS Canvas!

This is a first attempt at a Bob Ross painting.

Audrey III            3/23/12              18" x 24"

It's also a first attempt working with oil paint. 

Or paint in general for that matter. Well, paint on CANVAS, that is.  Much of what I tend to work in - that people think are paintings - is with soft pastels...

...or soft pastels combined with colored pencils. 

PRISMA-COLOR to be exact. They're a bit pricey, 

but they really ARE all THAT.

Back to painting.

I've done a lot of set painting in my sordid past. 

Now, one of the aspects of theatre that I've come to love 
happens to also be the name of a text that was used at the university I attended - Process to Product - taking 
in the brainstorming of ideas, the 
research, the auditions, 
rehearsals, and 
of course...

opening 
night! 

But that's not before tech week! 
And then...it closes. You revel quietly... 
and then not so quietly at the cast party...

you do it again.

Process to Product. 

Rinse. Repeat if desired.

One of my favorite backstage painting techniques 
is the use of wet blends. It's this use of smearing a few 
colors together - quickly, while it's wet, to make something 
that looks like wooden paneling, or, say...
 a floor (wood OR marble)... 


or who KNOWS what.


Some of the best theatre sets I've seen were in fact styrofoam, PVC, and recycled pieces of 1/4 ply. Recycled to the 
point of looking like something from Larry Shue's 
The Nerd on one side, and Little Shop of 
Horrors or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 
on the other.


 It's this same use of wet blends that led me to blending and smearing the pastels when working on paper...

...and eventually the Sharpies, when working on people.

And that's PART of the secret to doing those Bob Ross paintings. 

It's a "wet on wet" technique, allowing for certain blends...smears...to happen in just the right places. Those 

"happy little discoveries" that Bob talks (talked) about in his shows.  Something else that makes it work... and this is true with ANY painting... is to step back and take another look. 

Up close, you smear one color across another... 

And when you step back a couple of paces it's the upper edge of a snow bank.

We do this backstage too.  It's called "The 30 foot rule". That is to say, when you're painting something, and it doesn't 

QUITE look realistic, step back 30 feet or so... 

'Cause that's as close as any audience 

member is gonna get.

And that's when it hit me that I've been doing this kind of painting for quite some time! It's just it was never were on canvas. Well, not unless it was a piece of canvas 

stretched over a 4'x8' frame of 

one by four.  

(((this is the point where once again in the narrative I really regret not having any decent photos of sets I've worked on))) 

When asked what kinda of art I do, 

I generally say drawing. Pencils, pastels, ink... and always 

state that I never painted. Having made now a first attempt at a Bob Ross piece, I now realize that I HAVE been painting... 

it's just that my "paintings" covered a 40'x60' space, 

and were designed to look like something else. 

Until you step back JUST a bit...

and there it is.

It was an exciting, and successful first stab at oils.

There's gonna be more of these. I can feel it in my bones.

And in my Michael's gift card.

The Human Canvas - White Rabbit

Or shall we say...

Through the Looking Glass?

Like the previous session 

 (finished just minutes before), this was another piece 

designed to use the canvas as presented. In this case, once again making use of the line between the arm and the back.

It begins with a bit of a landscape - 

starting with a couple of mountains on the shoulder...

...And adding a third to continue onto the back.

Still playing with a couple of blending techniques, 

though for this piece the blends are applied not to the main 

figure of the drawing, but rather what ends up being the background. Something subtle, for just 

a bit of depth and variation. 

Also, several friends (and I) have mentioned 

loving (enjoying, geeing out to, etc) the "step-by-step" shots. 

So - There are quite a few more shots 

here showing that.

Some sky and a stream...

...a meadow, 

and the beginning of a waterfall.

Hm. Seems to be a fourth mountain in there now too.

Then start to add some rocks over which the water CAN fall.

And get in there with some black before moving over to the back.

And now this goes from landscape...

...To something else ALL together.

I've played around with a BIT of an Alice in Wonderland theme before, but I always forget the rabbit!

And Done!

Except this time it looks like I forgot ALICE!

Like the previous entry, 

An Octopus's Garden in the Shade, There are a few more shots that OUGHT to be included - shots that I don't have access 

to JUST yet. I'll get 'em. So please check back!

And thanks for coming by this time around.

Thank you Sadie...and Shaelyn.

Until the next...