x.13 is missing

Actually I decided to start over, and repaint extract 13. It was overworked and getting muddy. Today, I'm skipping forward and posting extract 14 which I recently finished. I'll be working toward a better resolution for the missing 宇宙人.

宇宙人 x.12

Three heads are better than one ~ another acrylic painting from my alien menagerie extracts.

alien menagerie • extracts

Most of my alien menagerie project exists as piles of pencil sketches. The time I have to work on oil paintings is less than I'd like, so they take quite a long time to complete. "Extracts" is the name I've given to a series of more casual paintings that I can complete with more speed and spontaneity.

The aliens in these pieces are pulled straight from my sketchbooks. I'm not worried about setting up an environment for these, or how they might fit into a more elaborate piece or series someday. I like to think of them as plates from a journal or guidebook of various 宇宙人。

They're acrylics on Rives BFK paper (7.5x10"). It was really fun to pick up acrylics again for these pieces. I used them for most of my career as an illustrator. There's a comfort of familiarity that I haven't acquired for oils just yet.

More extracts I've painted are here.

getting the ball rolling: pencil sketches

Initially I was stumped by what the setting and dynamic of the winter creature would be. I considered a hibernating character. Perhaps the scene would be in a burrow, or maybe the box could be a freezer. I wasn't happy with the idea of painting a sleeping character though. On the upside, I rather liked the idea that came out of this line of thought, that we'd be viewing the scene through a frosted pane of glass with the center wiped clear.

Eventually I started playing with the idea of a snowman. Simple, obvious, though not 'biological', it served as a fun point of departure and pretty quickly evolved into the character I'm painting for this series. My snowman became white and fluffy, so now I'm working the balance between cute and weird.