Might be obvious by now, but I love tigers. I love painting tigers, they are such majestic beautiful creatures. I've actually painted 2 since my last post. The first one I need to take a better photo, so for the lack of imagery I'm sharing the one currently in progress.
This is only the second time I've painted a piece this large. The first one I painted when I first started using oils and caught an amazing deal at the local Michaels on canvas's. That one currently hangs above my bed...This one, inspired by my favorite blue warrior of the Black Jaguar White Tiger foundation, will need to find a good home for hanging. That will probably end up being somewhere in my house, but hey..I'm not complaining!
I started working on the head first, painting the eyes earlier in the process than usual so as to not creep out my baby sister with the 'empty soulless eyes'.
Jorge Luis Borges
“ Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.”
I was actually so happy when the face started to take shape, I did at first mess up the markings on the top of the head. I was quick to point it out to my sister (who gets to look at waaayyyy too many progress pics of just about everything I paint) the misdirection of those markings, but she couldn't see it. The anal in me took over and I painted over the black stripes. When you looked at the tiger straight on, they seemed ok...out of visual perspective...but when you looked at him head tilted you could clearly see those stripes were not aligned with his nose and tilted direction of his head.
It got the better of me and I have yet to repaint those puppies back in there. Every mistake is a learning opportunity, or at least that's what I tell my girls and all their friends that happen to be in the vicinity when I'm offering up 'random thoughts by Lisa'. I'm pretty sure they just smile and nod.
For a change in pace, I'm painting in the background intuitively with no plan whatsoever using random brush strokes and whatever color hits my brush. I definitely have much more work to do before he is done, but for now....I like where he is going.
In other news, I am going to my first ever Art Fair to display and maybe sell some of the many pieces collecting in my office/studio room. I was told by a friend that I need to 'share' my art, so I signed up with my mom (also an artist who paints flowers)...which means I should probably update my Saatchi Art page with the newer pieces I have finished this year once I'm done typing this up here...i'm not procrastinating at all...is it wrong to love my work this much??? And yes...I'm talking to myself, considering I am the only one who reads these posts, so until next time Lisa...
Ashlan Gorse Cousteau
“There is nothing like the thrill of walking through the jungle looking for a tiger and knowing they could be watching you already”