I sort of took a week off after the Art Splash studio tour. I hadn't planned on making any art this week, but made I did, finishing a painting I'd started for the tour but opted to hold back because it didn't feel fully baked. It's not uncommon for me to circle back around days or weeks later and make necessary changes that were not glaringly apparent when I originally finished the painting. Often, I prop up finished work in my bedroom so that I can ponder its merits as I drift off to slumber in an indica haze, or view it with fresh eyes when I first awaken.
I added Yupo kelp fronds to the background, and found a way to afix tiny round mirror tiles to the canvas as air bubbles.
Yupo is a plastic type of "paper" used in alcohol ink art. Using a soldering iron, I create holes/negative spaces by melting the yupo. To affix it to the canvas, it's melted onto the surface. I can make holes in the canvas using the soldering iron, and to add the tiny mirror I wedge it into the prepared hole and buttress it on the back on the canvas using hot glue.
Art Splash visitors were intrigued when I showed them this process. The Yupo produces some really great texture and the holes and mirrors in the canvas provide unique visual interest.
This might conclude my current series of octopus paintings. I am circling back to an old project--a stop-motion animation video--that I want to finish before I die. No, no maudlin thoughts of my untimely demise, I just did the math a few months ago and realized that if each minute of stop-motion video requires 1440 photos and the video is one hour long, I'll need over 86,000 photos. And the photos are the easy part. They still need to be animated and sprinkled with magic pixie dust.
I built a few of the sets, and have completed creating most of the puppet characters. The first draft of the script is complete. Yet, it's a multi-year project and given how life always happens and get in the way, I need to focus on gettin' 'er done.