Dinosaur Triptych

This is a rough plan for a large triptych for some friends of mine. The main idea is to build the image up of large textured areas of colour, in a similar style to another recent painting of mine, Castelo dos Mouros, only in this case with a dinosaur being approached by a car coming out of a time tunnel. The cloud of dust being kicked up by the car you can see in this version probably won't be as dramatic and yellow - and I want to include some kind of vague purplish effect to hint at the disappearing time tunnel.

The picture will be made up of three big canvases, about 1.2m tall. It's not exactly huge but bigger than I'm used to working - so it's also a bit of an experiment for me. I'm looking forward to all the extra real estate for texturing though.

I originally conceived this composition as a single canvas, but I like the idea of the long neck being centered in the middle panel, while the main focus is still in the lower right.

For an idea of what I'm planning for the background, below is a picture of the Brisbane river from up at Kayes Rocks that I'm using as a reference. I'm not going for realism although I do intend for the colours to be a lot closer to the photo below (although the painting above is blued a bit because I took it in the sunlight and I don't know how to use my digital camera).

Portuguese Two-Tailed Mermaid

The painting above is a two-tailed mermaid - based on a sculpture I saw in Jardins do Palacio de Cristal - in Porto, Portugal on a holiday earlier in the year. I'm not sure why I liked this idea enough to paint it - but I hadn't seen a two-tailed mermaid before and the idea just seemed so much more practical and down to Earth than the awkward disney or Waterhouse mermaids. Apparently they had sculptures of these all over Europe, but this was the only one I saw. Well, the only female one anyway.

Here is the photo of the sculpture I used as a reference:



And if anyone is interested the kml for the location in google earth.

Here are some work in progress sketches... the first one was the original sketch from the photo. I tried to change some angles and things halfway through the sketch and ended up with her half twisted and the proportions a bit messed up.



So I redrew a second version to fix things up and add in a few more elements



I also did this last one initially to sketch out what I wanted to do with the hair, but used it to also play with a simplified version exaggerating the main curves of the form...

If you find yourself inside a bubble, you've gotta make your own way home

This is a work in progress photo from a painting I started months ago. I had the idea of a bear being left on the moon - the idea being something along the lines of early stages of trying to settle the moon much like when they sent dogs up in the early stages of space flight. Obviously we would need to test that the environment can support life.. but it sucks for the bear. Seeing the rocket take off in the distance - and the bear reaching out against the glass bubble highlight the feeling of abandonment I was aiming for in this picture...

When I first though of this I went out and got the canvas, drew up some sketches, started painting and got this far within a few hours... but I haven't been able to touch it in months.

test

first post!