Drawing with dice

It's not dancing with wolves, but wolves are dangerous. I'm all safety first. Tonight I've started on a new me. I even resculpted my bearded visage, that's commitment for you. Oh and also I'm aiming to complete a piece of work a night. A small drawing (14cm x 9cm) but a drawing none the less. I might do some bigger ones if I'm feeling brave.

Anyways enough prattling on and on. Here's the drawing. 

Sharpies on moleskine, 14cm x 9cm.

Frazzled lines.

I had an odd day for me. I was a bit frazzled due to a sleepless night. One of my kids I lovingly call Logjammer, just wanted me to stay awake.  Due to his machinations, my frazzled head could not paint. Every attempt just disheartened me. So nothing from today to show you, but lurking, forgotten in the deep darks, was this drawing from the pre-cave years. 

Dice drawing  - No1. 10"x 7"

In other news I've got my first commission, and I'm off to speak to a venue about getting a show up. So I'm pretty excited.

No pithy and witty title

An odd day in the cave. I got a good day of painting in, I didn't have any 'painters block' nor were there any interruptions. Yet I still feel underwhlemed. The only reason I can think of is that I spent all day on one painting -'Procedural Painting V3.1.2 20"x 20" Oil on board.' 

I'm using emergent properties in this one, so when lines cross from different layers they create a random number of rectangles or circles each with their own set of random elements, such as size, line thickness and opacity of paint to name a few. All of these variables must be roll fro on the hoof, as I have no idea when lines will cross. That creates a huge amount of dice rolling -  in total I spent over an hour rolling dice. 

Below I have a picture of layer 4 finished but without the emergent properties, followed by an image with the properties put in. 

On the left is Layer 4 before I add in the emergent properties and on the right after they have been added. Each aspect of the emergent properties must be calculated, its position relative to it's origin point, it's form, style, thickness of paint and line and the tonal values I could go on and on.

No real conclusion to this post except for this little thing near the bottom of the 'e' at the end of here.

Santa, Lines and Skulls.

It's been really hectic for me recently. Lots disruption to my normal work schedule. Which means I've not been as regular with these posts as I would like to be.  So enough whining about poor old me, "What have you been up to?" I hear you ask. Well the answer my friend is blowin' in the wind( a Scorpion reference always helps everything along.) The real answer lies below...(spooky)

I've been focusing on just two paintings lately which is really odd for me. Both works are significant to me, because I'm really trying to push and gel my ideas together. First up is my procedural painting from my last post. 

Procedural Painting  V3.1.2 20" x 20" Oil on Board. WIP

I'm trying to really make use of emergent properties with this series. See my blog hop for more details. As I work from a series of instructions for these paintings I inevitably make mistakes, but rather than get rid of my mistakes or 'glitches' I incorporate them into my work. The bottom right corner has a grey smear which was a misplaced square. It should have gone and has been placed correctly above near the top right corner. To highlight the glitch I circled it in black. The other circles and squares have come into being because of how the painting interacts with itself. (For example when lines from different layers cross, it creates a randomly located circle or rectangle, the properties of which are randomly generated as well.)

Next up is the latest in my Pattern Recognition series.   

Conways Loose and glitch life. Oil on Canvas WIP

Not much to tell you about this really other than it's really pushing my technical ability, I've set my heart on a particular finish for this piece. My problem is that I don't know if my skills are up to it. It will be both frustrating and fun to find out.  As a bonus you get to see parts of my Cave of  Paint.