Muses Wanted

Now that I've finished the eavesdropping painting, I've got a blank canvas staring at me, and need to figure out what to paint next.

I'm sort of in the mood to do a crowd scene, but no particular scene is calling to me. I've done a couple of crowd paintings in the past. Both deal with an individual who is in a crowd, but for some reason separate.

There was The Party Goers:


And, the rather uninspiredly titled, Crowd:

So, anyone got any ideas for the next one? (I'm unlikely to ever use them, but you never know what will lead somewhere.)

Post-adolescence Notes: The Eagle & The Nightengales

I completed the post-it note story for Mercedes Lackey's The Eagle and the Nightingales, and returned it to the library. It took me quite a while to write the story for this book, because I wanted the story to in some way address the relationship I had with Mercedes Lackey's books when I was in High School - the heyday of my Lackey reading - and it turns out that I find it very difficult to make high schoolers interesting. At least without making them act like twenty-five year olds.


You can read the complete addition to Mercedes Lackey's novel here  and here (it is in two parts for ease of upload).

At Last!

I've finally finished this painting:


Of which I still can't seem to get a very good picture. (The dark line at the left edge of the photo is just the camera freaking out, and it's a little darker, and well, blurier, than the painting is)

The painting is about 48" x 60", oil on paper. Here are some detail shots, though, which should give you a slightly better idea of what's going on, at least as far as texture and palette goes.



I always find myself very attracted to detail shots of my paintings. So much so that sometimes I want to make a much larger painting just based on the detail shot. But I know that I would end up finding that painting rather boring, as I end up finding many purely abstract paintings boring. It has to be part of the larger whole for me, even if, in the end, it is the details that I find most satisfying.

Staying Inside the Lines

A friend sent me a link to this color-in dress by Berber Soepboer & Michiel Schuurman.


I'm very curious as to how it works... Does the color wash out? Or is it permanent? Unclear, but intriguing.

Berber Soepboer's website also has a lot of other smart and rather beautiful work - some done with Michiel Schuurman, some without. Some of it made me think of new avenues for Shell Game. Some of it just made me want to design clothing myself. All of it is worth a look.