Cartoon

I've been busy recently trying to get work done for an upcoming show. The good news: I have an upcoming show. The bad news: they won't let me hang nudes.

Now doesn't that sound all kinds of perverted.

So, between schoolwork and house-hunting, I've been frantically stretching canvases, priming canvases, measuring frames, and so on. I much prefer drawing, because I'm a great deal more competent at it. But drawing requires matting and framing in order to be presentable. A painting on canvas needs only to have its sides neatly painted, either in a continuation of its painting, or in a solid color (such as black, or the background color of the painting in question). Right now I can't afford to mat and frame five or six pieces. But with a little effort, I can make my paintings ready to hang.

I do have something to show for my absence -- a full sized cartoon of the painting:




Charcoal and carbon pencil on brown paper, 40" x 16".

I've never really done a full-size cartoon before -- usually I'll have a sketch in my sketchbook, and I'll take it over to the artograph at the school and use that to enlarge the image so I can transfer it to the canvas. This time, though, I wanted to work out the composition at size instead of fiddling around on a smaller area. It's actually pretty liberating: I don't have to fudge on some areas that would be too small on a 5x7 sketchbook. I also know where everything is going. Sometimes, working in the sketchbook, I won't get the proportions of the composition right, so when the image gets enlarged, the composition gets thrown out of whack. What I mean is that I'll scribble a haphazard box to work out my composition in, but the box (picture plane) doesn't have the same proportion as the canvas I end up working on. So, the arrangement of elements I worked out in that box doesn't work well on the canvas.

Closeup of the figure's face.

I'm still working out exactly what I want and where I want it in the composition. I'm anxious to get started on it, but I know if I don't finish the drawing and know where everything is going to be and what direction I'm going in, I'm going to flounder somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of the way through the painting. Happens every time. You folk who work so spontaneously and on the fly -- you're lucky dogs. Nyah.

This is a little scary for me -- I'm still afraid that I'm going to irrevocably screw up and have nothing to show for it. I'd cross my fingers, but it's rather hard to hold a brush that way!

Next time I'll post some of the progress on the painting itself.