Red Region Inferno

I have been pumping out an average of three erotic themed paintings a week since the beginning of the year. My mind is going soft from it. Sexy stuff brain fry.
I tried putting a few unfinished large canvases up on the easel to get away from it, but they are unfinished and piled against a wall for a reason it seems.
Good stuff that needs done when the feeling hits is what they are.
Most the crap I just paint over with white and then do something new.

I needed to release myself from sex themed hell.
I needed to just whip something out that didn’t matter and could suck.

So… This is what I made.

It is my wife. She doesn’t like it it and not just because I did it super fast in a cheesy illustrative, fantasy, romance graphic novel or card game style.
Nope, she doesn’t even hate it because it is so small and she says my small stuff all sucks.
She hates it because of the overall feeling and her expression.

I asked if she wanted me to rosy it up for her, but she said that wouldn’t have help. Even when I told her it would only take ten minutes or so to completely re-do her flesh tones into something not so ethereal she said no.
I said it would take me another ten or fifteen to warm the background and re-curve the mouth and eyes resulting in a whole new look… nope.
My cheesy little break from sexy art got a bad review. I should have just tossed it in the garbage after I was done, but my daughter had seen it and loved it “That’s mommy!” so I didn’t.

The Painting:
8″x10″ on a stretched canvas with acrylics.
I first did a rough pencil sketch on the canvas of my wife’s face and then painted in the background.
Didn’t really know what I planned with the background so I started with a river scene. You can tell how that went over I’m sure.
F the river… I painted over it real fast with the branches. I never even got rid of the river first.
I then painted her a little shirt and did the flesh.
I’d planned on wasting just a couple hours, but Mary Poppins had started right about when I started the painting and now it had finished. (My daughter was watching it)
I blame my time wasting on the river fiasco. (It was a fiasco to me)
Anyways… I finished up the flesh and did the hair and pretty daisy chain. I love painting hair. I love drawing hair. It is just fun as can be. It is so fluid. Painting water isn’t fluid, but hair is. Ain’t that strange.
Overall I ended up pretty much wasting half a day making this stupid picture that my wife disliked so much.
Yup… just to clear my mind.

Back to painting pictures of foot kissing.

The very first time with someone has so many special moments.
It doesn’t matter if I have known the girl ten minutes or a year… if I have never had sex with her she has special magic to offer up for that very first time.

One of those special moments is when she takes off her panties.
The first time she takes off the panties is special because it is like finding the golden ticket to her magic candy land.
A woman doesn’t take them off unless she is ready.
Or at least it has been my experience that when the panties come down it is the go ahead.
The gonna happen signal.
“Read or not, here we go!”

So I love it.
It is a beautiful thing.

So… another tiny painting.
I’ve done a lot of these now. Most suck and piss me off.
The 8″x10″ thing ain’t working. Out of stubbornness I must continue to paint these tiny things, but I shall confess… I moved up to 9″x12″ sized canvases.
The one above is 8″x10″, but for my sanity I moved up just a tad. 9″x12″ is still freaky small for me and causes me brain cramps, but not as bad as the 8″x10″.
My wife is still not happy though. She says “Honey, you just can’t paint small.” and then she says “Your small painting just don’t look that good.”
Yup, stuff like that.
I agree, but I’m stubborn.
EXAMPLE:
Above painting looks good at a glance (maybe) then you notice that the left side of the figures upper arm/shoulder area  is kinda bulging.
I scraped that off and made it perfectly proportional… but then the balance of the overall image seemed off. My composition was F’d extreme from just that little bit of fixing.
The overall balance is much more important to me than my subject matter so I put the bulging area back in.
I thought about twisting the torso a tad… but “It’s an 8″x10″ painting!”
How much time can be spent on something like this?
I’m giving myself a 3 hour max now from sketching to completion, including alterations.
I’ve realized that without time constraints I could waste away a whole day doing something that should just be left alone. I am flawed, paintings are flawed, life is flawed, and life is art.

Along with my new found quest to conquer the world of erotic art and mess around on tiny canvases comes some general studies.
Figurative ones mostly because I will be mostly doing figurative work for this project.
Composition and paint handling are my main priorities with these studies.
My usual painting methods don’t apply well in such a small area so i have been experimenting and playing around.
This was the fourth figure study on an 8″ x 10″ canvas.

The oddity here is for my eyes only I think.
My finished product looks to me as if someone else has created it.
I did not notice this until a week or so had past when I pulled it out to apply some varnish.
Varnishing a little painting that I new I had created yet looked like it was the work of another was queer indeed.
I hope this project gives me many more such experiences.

Another tiny painting of an erotic nature.
Just ten inches across and eight inches in height, done on cotton canvas.
I have been managing to find time for at least one of these little erotic paintings each week, but have also had to step up the size and do some a bit bigger.
These tiny things are really constraining.
I paint twice as fast at a larger scale. My wife is really hating the finished products too. She says my stuff looks unnatural at a small size and though I don’t exactly agree with her… I do know that I can’t find my natural flow when working tiny. The public rules though when you are a working artist and I shall find out I suppose if my working tiny has merit when the series is done.

I ended up calling it starry kiss as a descriptive title when I needed to save file, but when painting it I was thinking something between the stars of the sky and the magic of passions. The stars are as much creation of the kiss as they are a setting for the moment. Imagined, but real I suppose.
“Starry Kiss” is not an official title for this. I think I shall maybe not title these (or very few) small erotic paintings at all and leave it up to the collectors who end up buying them to title them.
Sex, love, lust, etc… is very personal. It is viewed differently by all and art is participatory in my mind much the way sex is. Letting the original owner title each work as they see it seems fitting for such a subject.
Still not sure on how I am going to handle that.
Still not sure how many I shall do for that matter.
We shall see.

For those not fallowing along:
My first post of the year (see it here) was called “New Year Art Endeavors” and explains that I usually never work on small canvases and that I have decided to tackle art of an erotic nature as my years goal.
Once I have conquered working on tiny canvases I will no doubt jump back up to canvas sizes at three to four times this scale at least for my art erotic.

Since my biggest goal this year is to push the erotic with my art I thought I should have my first post of 2012 be some art of an erotic nature.
I have also been screwing around with tiny canvases. I am doing it out of stubbornness to tell the truth. I am really not suited to such tiny painting surfaces. I will not stop until I feel comfort though.
Once comfort has been achieved I will most likely move back back up and avoid anything under 24 inches in any direction again for some time.
Heck… I may even take some mural commissions to un-cramp my brain from doing these tiny canvases.

Anyways, without further ado…

Just for the fun of it I shall say that in the case of this particular little painting the model ‘of my minds eye’ was my lovely wife, and my vision is one I am very fond of.
I love it when she rides me from this direction as I am very much an “ass guy” and she has some great moves.
Though I have not seen her red/pink nighty in a long time my imagination created it because I have very fond memories involving it.

I have been a painter for my entire life.
My work has mostly been in oils through the 80′s and 90′s until I switched to acrylics in the late 90′s.
A brush and canvas are my tools.

Watercolors have never gotten along with me though.
They just don’t do what I want. Classes, friends who only work in the medium, books, etc… have done me no good.
I learned all the tricks. I hate tricks though. Watercolor doesn’t allow for freedom of expression like oils and acrylics do.

Erotic art is the toughest market in art I think. The collectors are limited.
Not everyone feels comfortable displaying such things on their walls, no matter how much they may personally love it.
I’ve done figurative work since I was a small child, but I have never done erotic paintings.
I don’t know the market or the people in the erotic art world. For some reason though I decided to start meddling around with it though.
Since I don’t know the scene, and have no expectations to live up to in the world of erotic art I decided to do a watercolor for my first experimentation.

Here it is.

Watercolor on paper and it is just ten inches wide.
Working small with paint is also not my thing. A twenty four inch canvas is about my average/small, and I am usually working at double that.

Yes, I have stepped outside of my painting comfort zones.
Watercolor, erotic subject matter, and keeping it small.
I am not sure what to think of the outcome.
For a first endeavor it is o.k. I guess.
Shall I do more?
I’m not sure.
Maybe a few acrylic works are needed in this small size before again attempting the use of watercolors.
Maybe some larger (and looser) watercolors are needed before attempting another small work in this restrictive medium.
We shall see.

As for the erotic art market I will look into that as well.
Unlike many who play with paints… I can not afford the luxury of painting JUST for fun.
I am simply to flaky to hold down a real job.
My source of income is art. I have a family to support.
Art that I cannot sell is not an option for me and I refuse to paint lame ass landscapes just to make ends meat.
So… I am excited to delve into something new, but also anxious at the prospect of failure.

Maybe fate will deal me some good cards on this one.

Upward to tranquility…
is obviously a painting inspired by the yoga pose Upward Facing Dog.
“urdhva mukha svanasana”

Upward To Tranquility

This pose stretches the chest, lungs, abdomen, and back.
It will free you to breathe… thus the tittle of the painting.

High up, free from bothersome demands where the air is clean and fresh we open ourselves and allow ourselves to truly breathe.

I have actually done this pose high up on a mountain a few times, but in general I practice it on a mat in my living room.
If my mind can become clear enough I still am able to find that tranquil place I long for.

Upward facing dog is not only good for the chest, lungs, abdomen, and back.
It also stimulates your internal organs and offers relief from depression.
Many  yoga practitioners claim that this pose offers relief from asthma also… and they very well may be right.
Personally however I think that if it does help with asthma it is simply because when in this pose and breathing correctly it expands the lungs and chest so much that it may actually clean out the lungs a bit – ‘so to speak’.

So… I hope you enjoy my painting and it inspires you to not only get into this very beneficial pose, but also to seek your own tranquility.

“away she goes”

That is the title of this painting.

away she goes

It is a small painting , just 13 inches wide, and I did it with acrylics.

I painted it in 2005.

and… That’s all I have to say about that.

Sometimes I find women to be completely void of all emotion.
A straight razor too seems void of all emotion in the exact same way to me.
So sharp, so perfect, able to cut so smoothly that you can’t even feel any pain, yet at the same time cut so deep that the wound may be your undoing.

This painting remains untitled.
I never could put a name to it.

The girl who inspired it is no longer a girl. She is a woman.
My memory of her will always be of her as just a girl though.
When I knew her she was young. I met her when she was about 19 or 20 and new her for just a few years.
I have seen her, and what she grew up to be over the years and she is so very different and yet the same.

This painting represents her back then.

It is sad and spooky how fucked up a girl can get by the time she is reaching her late teen years.
By the time I met this gal she had already become a zombie doll.
Pretty, jaded, angry, and hurtful to everyone around her.
She was mostly hurtful to herself however.
I tried to help her become a little less self destructive.
My own youth limited my ability to do so and I failed.
She went  down her very destructive path and ended up reaching some low places I am surprised she lived through.

She did survive though.

Now she is a completely fake person who pretends to be a stereotypical PTA type mommy.
Her smile while amongst the other PTA mommies is a painted on thing that immediately turns to a hard line of boredom and hate when she turns around so they can not see.

She hates her life.
She hates her past.
She hates that her youthful beauty has faded.
She hates not being in control.
She hates her 2 ex husbands that have to write checks for child support each month.
She hates being a mother to children with deadbeat fathers, and most of all hates knowing that she can’t undo her past mistakes.

All of these hates manifest themselves into cool and calculated plots to hurt everyone around her.

She is a cruel person.
She was cruel at 19 and has only sharpened the blade over the years.
Those that try to befriend her and get sucked into to her fake persona eventually find themselves under her blade.
She is a destroyer of lives.
Nobody is allowed to live a happy life if she is not allowed.

As an adult she takes her time and finds just the perfect way to destroy.
She will wait years if she must to get into a position to completely annihilate your life.

When young she would strike at first chance.

Ah… The patience one develops as they mature.

Ever go to a strong man competition?
If you havn’t… you should.
The flip cars, lift cars, press huge logs, throw kegs, and lift monster sized stones.
They do it fast too.
It is all about lifting, pushing, pulling, carrying the hugest things possible and usually in a semi race type of manner.

One of my favorite events is the tire flip.
Multi hundred pound tires flipped in a race.
Usually two competitors race side by side.
It is awesome.

I actually had a national tire flip champion model for me to do this painting.
We met up at  his gym and we went outside and he flipped tires.
He also did some atlas stones and some log pressing and some dead lifts… but the tire flip was what I was after.