guyomech, love the "light" effect on that. i'm super interested in trying to capture the light i see in hyperdimensional space next. kind of 6-d calabi-yau manifold made out of light on a black back ground.

also thanks everyone for the kind words, just thought they were kind of silly painting doodles! glad you like them. i really love both klimt and egon schiele

Dang that's cool, Guyo! Your abstract organic works like that one always look so alive.

There's been so much great work posted up in the last few days.

The new tabs for seeing someone's intro essay and first 10 posts got me re-reading my own intro essay. It reminded me that the reason I finally decided to get a profile here was because I had a good feeling there would be some great art here. That was back before our lovely art gallery, so I was unable to see any images.


I'm glad I went with my gut on that one. Phenomenal work everyone!

I can see them both for sure.

Guy - Beautiful as always.

I haven't touched my tablet in almost 3 months. I just went totally, 100% cold overnight. I know that I can nip it in the bud anytime by just simply doing it, but my motivation just hasn't been there. I'm a little upset with myself.

Guyo that is so rad, do you always use sculpted reference or objects or just some of the time? I'm really not happy with my paintings anymore without reference, but I really do not like the idea of being bound to having to always sculpt something in order to produce a painting I like enough to not sand it back off and start again...

Take that sketch for example, I would want to be able to paint that in surreakl unnatural detail but I wouldn't want it to just look colored in or washed over, I'd want something fully rendered up. I sort of feel at a big disadvantage not having a good computer and being able to mock up digitally first, and so many people are doing it now I feel left lagging behind. But I don't want to be bound to that either!

I feel like I'm in a kind of limbo stage, I don't want to be stuck to making things look photographic. Take the late Robert Venosa for example, almost none of his work looks like it was painted from reference yet it does not just look like a colored drawing either. Just don't know how the I would practice making that look good. Each little fragmented piece looks shaded and illuminated correctly, but as a whole there clearly can't be any reference for such a thing surely ? I'm just confused.

Thanks everyone!

Mailorderdeity: that sounds like a cool idea. The most important thing in making an object appear luminous is in how the light coming from that object interacts with surrounding objects and surfaces. If you look at my stuff in the member gallery you'll see that this is something I'm kind of fixated on. For many of these pieces I modeled references, either digitally or using good old fashioned clay, in order to have a realistic idea of how the light would really interact. This has made it possible for me to achieve similar effects without references as well. It's been a process of studying light.

Mr. P, glad you could be part of the unfolding of the creative potential here. It's a group experience for sure.

Art, any time you need a nudge out of a rut, try collaborating with someone. It's fun and takes you out of your comfort zone in a good way. Also, I'll say it again... You're way too freaking hard on yourself. Your contributions here are always refreshingly original.

Orion- I build references only a small percentage of the time, usually when I'm looking to push myself up a notch and am ready to take on the extra work. This contributes to an overall understanding of light and shadow, and the more you do this kind of exercise, the more this kind of realistic rendering will become second nature. This painting was done with no reference and in fact no preparatory sketch. I had expected to have no painting time during the event (being one of its organizers) so I really just kind of closed my eyes and started stabbing away with the brush, plugging into some subject matter that is familiar to me. Having Alex Grey painting at the next easel over can be both inspiring and a little intimidating.

I would recommend that you try getting a little more set up digitally, so that at bare minimum you have Photoshop for compositing and such. In the meantime, picture this: pick up about 5 pounds of white plasticine (modeling clay that doesn't dry). Reconstruct the face in your sketch using plasticine (half the head would be fine, built on a slab of wood for support, using tin foil as filler). Set up some lights- possibly a cool and a warm- and move them around the model, find a dynamic combination. Photograph this and use the photo as reference when you paint. If you don't have access to a projector, you can have the reference printed at full size on archival canvas at super low contrast, stretch it, spray with acrylic matte medium, paint right over it. (I prefer projecting and tracing, but there are a lot of right answers to this).

By adding some new steps to your process you might be able to approach a familiar subject from a new angle.

In my current situation it would be impossible for me to do any of those things unfortunately Guyo, but thanks for the tips! I do however have a couple of pounds of chavant, not particularly a fan of the stuff though, I wish sculpey was cheaper! Hopefully I'll figure it out no matter how I choose to execute it.

And spinCycle, that is gorgeous.

Spincycle, those celtic-like overlapping rings in the lower left hand corner is very DMT to me.

I really like it SpinCycle. My first thought was that it was too similar to the last piece you posted, but when I went back and looked at the last one, I realized that this is a total evolution from the other work. Very well done. I like the evolution of style over time.

Great design Guyo as always. Like sombody said the talent here is just amazing.

Last tattoo I did in Peru. It was a nice sacred design to end this chapter of my life with.

Very nice. Love the subtle color blends, something I don't see much of in tattoo art.

Nice stuff from everyone recently!

Nice- all the blurry foreground stuff gives it a great sense of falling into a deep field of chaos. The entity almost seems to be self-assembling from the chaos... Super cool.

That's how I imagine entities would form...out of the ensuing fractal craziness...

I just love this thread... always a pleasure to peruse - my eyes are gonna get diabetes, they get so much candy here! Thank you all.

The latest...

That's lovely Pup...nice soothing colour choice and pleasing blends.
Good depth perception too.

Do you use radial blends on every segment and then mirror?...or a kaleida filter?

Very nice, Pup. I love your attention to detail.

Your stuff would animate amazingly well....

Radial... regular, lots of gradient mesh. This one is mirrored/rotated. Some aren't. Some have miniscule differences in the blends. Depends on mood and dedication, lol.