Friday, September 15, 2006

The Naked Change

I promised in my previous day’s entry that I’d put up a painting that I’ve changed substantially. Here’s the before. It’s an illustration I did for “Realms of Fantasy Magazine” for a story by Tanith Lee called “En Forêt Noire.”



Once I turn in an illustration I can do what I like with it. It’s rarely in my plans to do anything with a finished illustration but once it sits around for a little while I start seeing more to it. Months went by on this one. During that time, as I always do, I did a lot of drawings to entertain myself. Even though I’m not really known for my nudes quite often I’m drawing naked people. It may be a habit left over from art school, it’s certainly a subject that artists should always be studious about or it may simply be that I like naked ladies.

All these pictures come out of my head and go onto the paper through a pencil that I have in my hand. Sometimes my hand seems to be the thing that really has the pictures in it because I don’t always know what I’m going to draw. It’s truly entertaining when I can surprise myself.

Finally getting to my point, I drew the picture below. It’s part of a series of drawings I’ve done of nude women with flowing forms around them. If you go to my website you can see several newer drawings I’ve done. Look in the ‘Drawings for Sale’ section for the newest stuff. They all have silly little captions.



I decided that it’d be nice to put the nude into the painting I’d done for Realms. It’s not that easy though to just insert something like that so I did a few more sketches till I felt I had something that worked well. Without drawing on the painting I painted in the nude directly. Oil paint is a bigger friend to you than the pencil is. It usually shows you the way and if you have a misstep it will happily forgive you. Love your paint and it’ll love you back. Never ever fight with it – you’ll lose.

Below you can see how the two pictures were squeezed together. The title of the new painting is “Stealing Blame.” I exhibited this painting in Anaheim at the World SF Convention and I sold it there.

2 Comments:

Blogger Tom Kidd said...

Matt,

The title is "Stealing Blame" because originally she was stealing another painting I had of the same title. I sold the painting titled "Blame" before the two were exhibited together. The title adds a bit of mystery so I kept it. As you pointed out, she does seem to have a secret though. She doesn’t want you to be telling on her.

11:28 AM  
Anonymous Milo Likes Snails said...

Interesting thoughts, I really enjoyed your blog

11:09 PM  

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