Textures, GIF Colour Palettes and LOVE

My adventures in the studio yesterday consisted of working on an existing painting and experimenting with surface textures for some future pieces. I also discovered something today that I like while saving these images to place on this blog.

Here is the current state of my latest lobster painting. The details aren't there yet so it looks a little flat, but I've here blocked in the shadows and darks. Once those have depth with more colours I'll start on the highlights.

This is a larger canvas that I've been playing with casually. It's in early stages, of course. I'm not totally sure where it is going at this point. I'm just having fun with experimentation in between other works.

I've been playing with surface texture a bit recently. Here I've wrapped a canvas with tape and then primed over it. I've also used oil-based painting mediums to achieve a barnacle-like texture which I think will work very well for lobster paintings. This may lead to a large, very close up painting of a lobster shell - I'm going to do some photography with my lobster shells and try some Photoshop compositions to see how this could work out.

These two screen shots are the GIF colour palettes from two of the images above. I am intrigued by the really interesting colours that the computer presents. It is neat to see how the images are broken down into flat colours. In some way I would like to use this breaking-down-of-colours to my artistic advantage :)

A New Series Idea..

I've been thinking for a while about the idea of painting portraits and crossing out the eyes with a big, single stroke of white paint and writing with big, magenta letters "FPO" - to disguise the complete identity of the person.

In advertising, FPO stands for "For Placement Only", and refers to something that holds the place of an image, or text, until the final components are decided. I feel this is an interesting means to consider people in society in a world so driven by the imagery of ads around us.

The sketch below is based off older works I've done, and simply worked up these mock-ups in photoshop. I wanted to see what the effect could be like. This is a project I may approach in the coming months.

New Lobster Paintings and Studies

This evening in the studio was all about a focus on the claw and knuckle components of my latest "shipment" of lobster carcass parts.

I did a bit of charcoal drawing to get warmed up then worked away on two different pieces. 

I did a couple of larger charcoal studies to get myself warmed up and familiar with the pieces of lobster I brought with me to the studio this evening. This is the better of the two drawings I made. Music while working = Joel Plaskett Emergency.

This is a new 12" x 12" canvas piece I started tonight. I had previously prepared the surface - it is a nice deep canvas, with duct tape wrapped around it. I then gessoed over the entire surface, and here you can note the shapes created by a few pieces of overlapping duct tape. I really dig the effect. Music here = Pat LePoidevin

This is a piece I started yesterday. It didn't get a lot of attention today. I like the look of it, it's painted on cardboard which is a cool throwback to some of my cardboard portraits from a few years ago. Music = can't remember. 

This is the same canvas from earlier, with some more progress made. The underpainting is done with acrylic. You can make out the duct tape lines a bit more with some paint on them. I'm happy with how this piece is coming. The colours, due to my iPhone photo, are off. It's not THAT yellow :)  Music while working = CBC Radio 

My Latest Upcoming Exhibition (Huge Group Show, But..Whatever Still a Show :)

The AWOL Gallery in Toronto displays tons of 12" x 12" pieces each year as part of their Square Foot Show. This is my second time participating. I've posted the poster here - I have three avocado paintings on display this year. This is my second year participating.

New Show I'm Stoked For

Nikol Haskova has a show starting at Ian Tan this Saturday. Ian Tan is a great space, not overly pretentious and comfortable. I've posted some pics below of works that particularly inspire me - the negative space around the crows is really great, so is the piece with the addition of found objects. This is definately going to have an impact on my upcoming work with lobsters.

New Exhibition On Display!

My new exhibition, at the NAC (Niagara Artists Centre) in St. Catharines, Ontario is officially up. The reception for the show is set for September 10.

http://www.nac.org/programs/plate-glass-gallery/now/281-drip-jon-shaw.html

This piece, titled DRIP is a looped animation displayed on two monitors. The animations are timed to interact with each other - the dripping water from the top monitor falls into the bottom screen. Each animation is done with a different method of animation for visual interest. The top screen is composed of roughly 25 pen and watercolour cut outs of water droplets, filmed one at a time, on top of an ink and charcoal drawing of a faucet.

The bottom animation of the jar is a graphite drawing which i erased, and redrew, depending on the placement of the falling droplet of water.

Some Lobster Studies

I'm currently working with a number of the lobster carcasses I recently picked up from the Granville Island Keg here in Vancouver. Here are a few crummy-quality camera-phone images of recent sketches for upcoming works. :)

My works focus around the theme of "consumption"...

...I feel that the way lobsters are torn apart and shredded by hungry restaurant-goers is an interesting metaphor for how we as people function as consumers in society...

...the interesting textures and shapes of these lobsters are only revealed because the restaurant-goers are providing these shells to me after their meals...

...they become an anonymous component in my artmaking process....

...i mediate a new use of these pieces of 'trash' and create work that i feel is unique...

...and i do, for the record, enjoy eating lobster.