I've been a little unfocused recently, mostly a readjustment to my new working hours and head full of cold. My eldest has started school and so I have gained a day, to flounce around in my painting smock. However my hours of work are shorter, which means I have a lot less faf time in the morning. Ooh how love a good faf in the morning. To cut a unnecessarily long and irrelevant story short, I've made myself a time table!! Organised Irish is my new name.
As for todays work, I've been badgering away at the commission portrait. More on that later. My procedural painting has had a lick of paint too. Have a look see.
The first image is of Procedural Painting V3.1.2 at Layer 4. The second is Layer 5 with the emergent properties added. I find it interesting how the 'action' seems to get concentrated in one or two areas. In Layer 5 most of the action happened around 31 cm from the right and 15cms from the top. There is another area developing in the bottom right.
Painting each new layer is becoming daunting. Every time a line crosses a line it sparks off a new interaction. At the moment the interactions are really dice roll heavy, by that I mean, I roll a lot of dice to generate very simple artifacts. The next works will work on a different level. I'm thinking of making the source data invisible and only painting the interactions and emergent artifacts. That would probably be easier to understand with an image. Shame theres no one about to draw one.
I was thinking when I painted todays layer about how everything seems to reach an equilibrium. I started thinking about it with reference to the tone of the line. It has a option to change everytime it crosses itself. Today it tended to become a dark grey. I wonder how many layers would need to be painted for the work to reach equilibrium and what on earth that would look like.
Commissions
I have been asked by a lady I'll call D to paint a portrait of her daughter. I won't be posting any images of the work apart from the odd detail. It's odd painting a work for someone you don't know. I know that D likes the style I paint in, but my style tends to the semi abstract and it is getting the balance right for D that is the challenge. Trying to Judge how much I can indulge myself and my ideas and still keep the likeness of her daughter. It's a fun dilema, one I never had to deal with before. Time will tell if I have made a good job of it or not. Here's the painting that got me the commission.
O, Binaries and Artifacts, Oil on canvas, 60cm x 80cm. 2013.