The ugly phase and homeless socks

I do believe there comes a time in every painting when it goes thru the 'ugly phase'. Here is this painting in that phase. Of course, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder but for me, the colors are so yukky that I have to just keep going based on faith.
In the meantime, to keep my mind off of the painting, I took a walk in the city with my sister. It's sad to see anyone homeless at this time of year but this was especially poignant: a group of homeless socks, huddled together from the cold. Won't you take one home to hang over the fire? Actually, all these socks had a story to tell. Some are the mates of the better sock that was chosen to hang for Christmas. Some of them said they would rather take their chances on the street than be forced to have a nail stuck thru them and hung for the amusement of some jaded child. Some of them were toeless veterans. When I got home I kissed my socks, knowing how lucky they were to have their own pampered life.

Cruely to Animals..the end

I dragged my feet, but finally I've completed Cruelty to Animals. I was disturbed by the amount of blank space in the painting and fixing that became a lot of fun, as you can see if you compare the previous post and this one. I painted in the same way that I used to draw as a child, making up a story as I went along. I love the end result. The words, if you can't quite read them, are: Beatum Beastia, Beastia Tui and, at the bottom, tit pro tat.
One day, I took a long walk with my sister. We saw these lonely piers.

Catching up

I haven't written in many days. I've been in a sort of suspended state of animation. LaLa land, also known as Paris. No, not the real Paris....I've just been intensely day dreaming. I'm reining myself in and trying to return to this earth. I've been working on Cruelty to animals. I made a lot of changes in it but I'm not sure about the colors. I'm going to do the border and then decide.

Besides my fantasy Paris trip, I went to the real Metropolitan Museum of art to see the new Greek and Roman rooms. It was incredible...I only got thru maybe one half of the Greek. I especially enjoyed the paintings on the plates and vases. Here's a snake challenged image.

Armadillo wearing a hat

More photos from the Museum of Natural History. Here we have a prehistoric armadillo, or relative of armadillo, wearing a little bone hat. Why did it evolve this little bone hat you ask? Maybe it lived in a place where rocks fell on it's head a lot.

And my inked in drawing for Tired Angel. I made the mistake of using a red watercolor pencil to draw the image. This red color is very intense and smears a lot so I'll have to cover over the red with white gesso or it will smear into every damn color I try to paint over it. Live and learn.

Tired angels and giant sloths

Here's the beginning of my new painting, Tired Angel. Just a drawing on canvas so far but we shall see how it develops.
In the meantime, I've been reading a book called The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. This is a pretty depressing, yet compelling story of what we have done to the earth and how long it will take, if ever, to recover or simply 'Digest' the mess we have made. It's keeping me up at nights. So one day last week I went to the Museum of Natural History to see all the giant mammals that are now extinct in North America. I was sorry to discover that the museum has 'modernized', meaning it plays to the lowest common denominator (but best paying customer): Kids.
The large, dull Victorian style hall that was crammed with skeltons of extinct mammals is gone, replaced with a whole floor that leads from dinosaurs to those mammals. Lots of interactive stuff but not enough actual animals! OK, I confess, I hadn't visited that old room with all the cases in maybe 20 years. Still, when I actually Wanted to visit it, it was gone. The new approach is interesting but controlling. The museum is pushing the information it wants you to have. But what if you have other questions?
ANYway, I did find the giant sloths. Here's one. They were maybe/probably wiped out by man arriving in the new world. They must have been quite tastyl

Franks and other deliveries

I wish I had taken a picture of the ugly phase. I guess I was painting too fast and I missed it. That manganese blue is hard to handle. It was so over powering. So I toned it down with some acra crimson to create a more purple color. I did use the managanese for the green. It's definately a blue-ish green but I'm working with it. The painting is all laid in except for the fun detailing and inking.

Here's another NY picture. The classic frankfurter vendor outside of MOMA. I wonder if the taxi's will really go on strike today. The whole thing mystifies me. Perhaps it has something to do with the Apocalypse?