Man (or woman), I gotta’ say – this one took it out of me. This one, I struggled with the color scheme, the composition, the subjects, and, well, everything. Some pieces just come together, but this one put up a fight, much like an oversized fish on the line. But, finally it seemed to gel. There are a couple things I could fix a little, but it seems better to leave a few loose ends. As you may know, this is #6 in a new series I’m working on, and you can watch a slideshow with all of them in it so far, below.
And just a little note on my procedure. I’m doing these strictly from the imagination, and they are also unpremeditated. I suppose that makes them surrealist, though they are also sci-fi, expressionist, and I rather think the missing link of visual rock and roll. Back to that in a moment. What I wanted to point out is that I don’t go look up how to do something, like a choppy sea, or an eye, or whatever, while I’m making the painting. I can look it up after, and before the next one, but I want these to rely completely one what I know and can draw with my own imagination. So, if I don’t know how to draw a choppy sea, I’ve just gotta’ wing it and do it my own way. But between paintings I like to do some practice, about a half hour a day, which is copying other paintings. So, I might decide, “shit, I should bone up on seascapes”, in which case I’ll copy one, and hope my observations while doing so, and the habit of hand, will sink into the subconscious and help me on future images. Of course everyone who is anyone in digital painting recommends using source images, but I want to be a little different from them (they tend to all look alike).
So, the visual Rock and Roll thing. I’m a sincere lover of rock music, as well as many other kinds. I’m a bit of a music junky, and am always on the look out for something new, and wonderful. I do think rock music is surely one of the greatest high art forms of the 20th century, and I also think that anyone who doesn’t agree is a snob, biased for some reason, or just doesn’t know the breadth of music in question. And in the grandest years of rock, which I’ve always thought was roughly 1967-1973,visual art was churning out academic, conceptual pieces, dry as chalk, and as exciting as an uneventful biology class. Where was the visual equivalent of rock music? Somehow, other than LP covers, which were one at least one level packaging for the music, it didn’t exist. People either did fine art, which would be at that time your more conceptual fare, or else commercial illustration. There are some examples, but none I’m crazy about.
I rather thought this series has some of the directness of classic rock. As in, sitting down with a guitar, and coming up with a melody, and some lyrics = a song. Compare this to drawing an image, and putting it in color. A song. A picture.
Nuff for now
~ Eric
Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 