Looking more and more awful

OK, I finally got back to the painting -- decided that the Monkey King needed to show up better against the background, added more highlights to the Monkey King and darkened the Buddha's hand...and now it looks awful. One could hope that awfulness leads to interesting solutions...

So, last we spoke of the Monkey King, he was on his way back to meet the Buddha and collect his winnings:

After days of flying and running, jumping and somersaulting, the Monkey King finally returned to where he left the Buddha, and he saw that Buddha was still sitting there with his eyes closed, as if nothing has happened. (To be continued...)

Monkey King meets Buddha

Back in the studio after being away for 2 days. I hadn't planned out what I was doing with this image (other than having the Monkey King wear Nike shoes and fly through the sky). Here I've decided to use the fable of the Monkey King's encounter with Buddha. The Monkey King is very boastful and vain; one day, he met up with Buddha and was telling Buddha about his tremendous powers, how far he could run, how quickly he could fly, etc. Buddha wagered him (would Buddha really gamble?) that however far he could run or fly, he would never escape Buddha's palm. (To be continued...)

What the Monkey King is thinking

Now you can read what the Monkey King is thinking. I'm liking the fuller wrist better.

Back to the fable -- the Monkey King arrived at a mountain range after many days, and he thought "surely I've come very far." He took out a brush and wrote on a rock "The Monkey King was here," and for good measure, he did a number one on the spot, too.

Naps are good for somethin'...

More napping today, but while I was napping, I figured out what I was doing with the Monkey King piece. Yes, from weeks and weeks ago, the one I was thinking about cutting into 4 pieces; I now have a better narrative for the image. Given that my Monkey King was already modernized and was wearing Nike shoes, why didn't it occur to me earlier his similarity to another monkey/king of sorts who's wrecking havoc on the world's stage, due to his hubris and naivete? Spent the evening mocking up the image with a few handy things...the map on the bottom is a stand-in for maybe a book like object. Figures on the finger tips might be Buddhist images, or maybe they'll be contemporary images. Don't have anything concrete yet...more naps might be necessary.

Drawn and quartered

Hahaha! Well, that's a low hanging fruit as far as puns go. So I lied yesterday about leaving the Monkey King for a while. I went back and fussed with it again today, and realized that having the entire story presented all at once in a painting really just isn't working. There is a punch line, after all (see previous entries for the story). And, I don't care for the composition as it is. I got out my cropping L's, and found that I liked it better as 4 smaller images. I think I will put them into a book format to control the flow of the narrative. The piece isn't really cut up yet, I've just roughly cut it up in Photoshop, so they're not identical in size. I haven't figured out what book format yet, but roughly, here's the narrative:

Larger Than Life -- a glimpse of a figure.



The Monkey King -- meet the character in the story.



The King's New Shoes -- here I like that the Nike shoe stands out better in a smaller format. It disappeared in the larger painting.



The Wager -- this needs reworking. I'll do that once I actually cut up the piece, probably tomorrow.

Moving along

I had some ideas where I wanted the image to go, so I tried this:



I wanted to bring some movements in, I've been using the moth to denote vanity, so that fit the image well. I also liked the way it looked (those were just taped on there); I painted one moth in. And I didn't like it. Took the moth out.

After staring at it for so long, I finally just took a big brush and some zinc white, and started putting in the movements in big strokes. Still not sure what I think of this yet, but I think I'll leave it for now. Maybe I'll go back and bring the lotus back out again.



And right, the punch line to the story with Buddha -- the Monkey King returned to where he left Buddha, "I flew to the end of the world, surely I escaped your palm! And I left my mark on a stone there."

Buddha held out his hand, "you mean this?" On Buddha's finger, you could read "The Monkey King was here," and there was still a little wet spot.

Lotus

Decided to go more 'obvious' with the Buddha reference and added the lotus. Not sure what I'm doing with the plum blossoms at the lower corners

Continuing with the Monkey King & Buddha encounter -- after leaving his mark, the Monkey King embarked on his return trip, to collect his winnings from Buddha. Again, he flew and flew and ran and ran...

A new painting

A new painting, just started. This is an iconic image of the Chinese trickster god the Monkey King. I did something I've not done before -- drawing the image in pencil first before going in with the paint, but I wanted a very iconic, very recognizable image, and so I decided to do that. This is from a traditional Chinese papercut image of the Monkey King, only I have him wearing a pair of Nike shoes.

There it is!

The 2007 exhibit brochure from Maryhill museum, with a picture of Fatherland in there! I've sent off a query to see if I can get more copies. They got the date wrong; I did it this year (2006) in the spring, but it's labeled as 2003; I don't suppose that matters too much.

This today was balanced out by my rejection from Beaverton Visual Arts Showcase which arrived at the same time. I don't have very good luck with this show, I've been rejected 3 out of 4 times that I've entered; I think maybe I'm just not their thing. Every year I think I won't enter again, but the next time it comes up, I waste another $20. Hope springs eternal I guess. For the record, these were the 2 pieces they rejected -- Look at Them Girls in Their Pretty Brocades and The Three Vanities.





Collected some materials that I might use for the Monkey/King piece. Can't work on it tonight, I'll need to do it outside (for ventilation); so if weather permits, tomorrow.

A good day

I think I made pretty good progress on the Monkey/King piece. Had to run to Kinko's again because I forgot to left-right reverse the map, but didn't have too much traffic problem.

Am getting good responses for my call for eye shadow; will be picking up a couple of them tomorrow and next week, plus Eliza already put hers in the mail. I had been asking for eye shadow that was no longer being used, and turning down the 'I have so much of this stuff, you can have some' type, although I didn't really know why...until Rebecca asked. And I had to put into words something that had been wordless before. It's always good to be challenged. In the end, I think there's just something about the transition from being something desired to something no longer desired that I find interesting, and sad. Especially in cosmetics, always so seductive at the beginning -- the surface all velvety and the color so rich, and its purpose to make us more desirable, in theory.

I regret being so harsh with the plum tree yesterday. It looks pretty sad, just bare branches and hardly as tall as me, all the trimmings left in a big mound next to its stumps. I most certainly hope it comes back ok next spring.

20th and 21st, among other things

Escape Velocity, diptych in gouache (and acrylic surface to be added later).

[These were really the 21st & 22nd panels.]

So these two, and the two below of the monkey king, were cut up from this piece from back in 2006, which went from bad to worse to pretty much given up for dead. Although now that I'm looking at these old photos, I think it could've been saved when I was about half way through. So I cut it up into these 4 pieces (plus there are scraps left).

I'll mount these on boards before I finish them.



On other fronts...

I'm recovering from a long streak of work, work, and more work. Between organizing and installing the Collins show, getting the iPhone app together (and the Good Prince had to get involved too), and installing For the Love of Food (opened this past Tuesday), I had my first day of 'holiday' yesterday since mid-July. I sat around and did nothing...it was bliss.

There's a lion sleeping in my trunk!

What!? You can't tell that it's a lion?! It's obvious...it's a lion on a pedestal, lying on its side, in my trunk. This is one of those Chinese ceramic garbage cans that are so ubiquitous in mainland China. Obviously designed by artists and not engineers -- although the lion has a big gaping mouth for a receptacle, that little hole on the bottom of the pedestal is how you would have to get the garbage out!

So we were at the China Council's annual Chinese New Year fundraiser auction, and as always I buy something totally inappropriate and useless. Last year, I bought the Peking Opera Monkey King suit, and this year, it's a giant garbage can! Of course I pass up all the gorgeous silk and wool rugs...just another thing to vacuum. I did buy a set of very cool stamps with a design from the Dunhuang caves and a book about China and Iran. And a very cute Chinese ink brush painting by a 9 year old.

I did work on Calypso today. Here are all the sheets laid out in order, waited to be folded and glued into the text block. Hopefully, tomorrow by this time, these stacks will be shorter, or maybe gone, and the stack of text blocks will be a lot bigger.

Buying time

Although I'm pretty certain that I'd be happier with the Monkey King cut up, I can't quite do it yet, so I'm buying some time by working on a few small paintings. For over a year now, all my paintings have started with some plum blossoms, a symbol of perseverance and also a nationalistic symbol in 70's Taiwan. Here I've started 4 of them at the same time, but I don't frequently do that.



This is how they start -- the paper is painted with whatever colors I have around, then come the plum blossoms. They look really stark right now, but they'll get mushed around a lot, and much of the blossoms will almost disappear beneath layers of images. Here's a painting that started out life more or less the same as these:

Portland Open Studios postcards

Bought the Epson C88+ inkjet printer today. It's a printer a lot of book artists like, and I'm thinking I'd use it for the Monkey King book. It's about $80, so not too extravagant. Spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with more marketing/business stuff, including screenprinting (with the Gocco) the Portland Open Studios postcards. The organization printed up postcards for everyone, but just the front side; each of the artists then have to print the backs ourselves.

This is just taken with Photobooth on my Mac, about 10" from the monitor/flash. Gocco printed in 2 layers (pale green background and black text on top) --

Postcards, labels

With Portland Open Studios 3 weeks away and Portland Art Center show 5 weeks away, today was a day of dealing with postcards, labels, etc, etc. Rounded out the day catching up with Art News and sketching. No, haven't cut up the Monkey King yet. When I walked by it today, I thought, well, this doesn't look as bad as I thought...

Portland Art Center show meeting

Took a friend on a whirlwind trip of the high desert on the 12th, and then spent the 13th recovering. It was a lot of driving. Still
didn't get any studio time today, but spent a few hours preparing for the November show at Portland Art Center. Met most of the participants for the first time. I'm also not sure where I'm going with the Monkey King, so I'm dragging my feet returning to the painting.

Buddha's hand

Added the finger prints and lines on the hand to also bring to mind rockeries. To continue the story...the Monkey King took on the bet and then took off flying. He flew and flew, and ran and ran, and after a few days, came to a mountain range...