in progress : watersnakes II

revisiting the old style, mainly out of necessity and time constraints. waited much too long to start this [talk about your dry spells]. as it is, it’s inspired by the work of gustav klimt. i wanted to go with something completely original, but try as i might, nothing was coming to me. i had a general idea of what i wanted but somehow could not make it work. [surprised the canvas withstood all that erasing. well, sorta ... had to tighten up the stretcherbars with wedges and the canvas with sizing.] poor thing.

feels a bit wierd working in this style after many years of wanting to move away from it; i know i used to moan about it, but in many ways, i’ve missed it. i have come to realize that this year. funny. guess you can’t really appreciate it until time passes. at any rate, i’m pretty happy about the direction.

gel, acrylic, dye, metallic pigment, gold leaf. i at first wanted to make this in light pastels, but everything looked so jarring [i guess i can't completely go back to the old ways ... i look at stuff i did way before and it's so damned bold and bright. not that that's necessarily a BAD thing, it's just that i've become accustomed to neutrals]. toned it down a bit with dye and texturized some areas with gel and mini glass beads. once i can take it as far as i can with the acrylic underpainting, i’m going in with oil. hopefully the process won’t take too long … i have to mail this out next week as the show is on sunday, july 12th.

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