The Hills Are Dancing

It's been blazingly hot here and it's been a little bit rough to think about anything other than hiding away from the outdoor heat. I've seen the weather authorities report that it's as warm as 115ºF here in Piraeus, Greece. Thankfully, with the low humidity it's only felt like 109º. Nothing quite like looking out your window and seeing the hills in the distance on fire. Maybe I should actually watch the news.

Step One

The first step is to make a very rough sketch of what I want the painting to look like. It can't be stressed enough that this is a VERY rough sketch on a small piece of paper. By the time I get it drawn on a canvas it will probably only look vaguely the same. There really is no reason to do a very detailed or very "good" sketch, because the sketch in and of itself has very little value. Some of my prettiest paintings have come from ugly sketches and some ugly paintings didn't really work out as well as the pretty drawing may have suggested it would.

Reverse

A lot of people assume that I come up with a caption idea first and then build an image around it. Actually, that's generally not how I do it. Usually I sketch out an image that I like and put the image on canvas. It's only when the whole thing is practically done that I actually start to think about what the person or persons are likely to say given the overall feel of the painting. This time I have a caption idea that I like, though I will probably have to pare it down a bit given the constraints of how much text can reasonably fit on a canvas. So I'll take you along this process and you can see how the project progresses with me. Fun!

Clint

I once tried to use the word "Clinton" in one of my paintings, but the text ended up looking really bad. The text looked a lot like ****-on. It turns out that at one point during the 1960s, the use of the name "Clint" in comics was unofficially banned and this comic illustrates why.

Icons

I think I was trying to tell a story using various pop-art iconic images. I'm not really sure if I succeeded, but it looks pretty nice in a corner of the apartment that needed a little color. Give it a shot. What's the story?

Six

Something went awry when I was working on this piece. Do you think you could spot what it is? Try counting out the answer to this one.