Test Painting: Uglier Patches

I promised uglier examples of my attempts to do patch paintings.

This one is pretty ugly at this stage, with parts half sanded off and crudely-meeting patches, and photo glare makes it a little hard to see.  The darkest patch comes from the Asteroid Belt pelt painting this one cannibalized.  It was 60 by 48 inches.

I might have been able to get away with a few isolated patches (no real meeting), or by taping off a checkerboard pattern (interleaving two paintings).  But I'd have to gamble a good painting on the tiny chance the overlaid one would work with it.

I like the distressed lizard skin look of the blue here, and the way the center looks like a deformed South America.  I'm not real suggestible, but put those two together and I get a "sea serpent off Cape Horn" feeling right away.

And I've always liked photos that use the painting as landscape, like just above.  Notice the new dark patch in the distance.

Below is the ugliest shot; the angle is interesting for the layered look, like a sandwich.  When you are a low-rent alchemist (process painter), there's no telling what will crawl from the cauldron.  Luckily, a certain satisfaction comes from making something really ugly too.

Test Painting: Pleasance If Not Presence

Here's a test on paperboard (16 by 20 inches) that's just slightly (13%?) more than pleasant.

It wouldn't even be pleasant unless I'd heightened the light in the background (by 13%) when I digitized it.  And if the original had been done better, this might suggest some sort of presence.

Test Painting: Marooned

The photo was terrible (and again, like a lot of the old ones, taken from the side), so I was lucky to get this much out of it, uneven or not.

I remember I liked this small test (15 by 20 inches?) for a long time.  I was never sure what it looked like.  Maybe dancing roots?

Test Painting: Sea Debris?

This is another one of the 2 by 2 foot tests I did on particle board.

The color is sort of nasty; purplish-greenish things do exist in nature, but usually next to a leaky chemical plant, or in some branches of the lettuce family (grown downwind of a chemical plant).  Maybe in kelp, tired of waving at passing waves, washed up on shore?

I had to convert this from a Polaroid photo, taken from the side.

Test Painting: Synapses

I wanted to test some ideas, so I bought a stack of 2 by 2 foot particle board.

The board turned out to be not much better than thick paper.  It still warped a little, had edges as lumpy as oatmeal, and was so heavy you could chop off a toe if you dropped a panel.  But I did get a few interesting, if crude, pictures out of the experience.

This one looks like synapses to me, and I've always liked the symmetry of using a "natural" painting process -- the sort-of erosion that happens with this process -- to make a picture that looks like something from nature.