The work in progress...

The hardest part of my job
is convincing my wife that staring
out the window is part of it.
--James Thurber

Because much of my work only happens in the temporal lobe, if you catch my drift, I sometimes find that I have said something or spoken about something in a tone or tense that indicates it has actually happened when, in fact, it hasn't. Ideas for paintings that sit around long enough actually begin to be paintings, at least in the head. I should quickly add that this is a good thing, not a bad thing, at least as far as the miracle that is "The Year of Magical Painting, Season Three" is concerned.

Case in point, the pornographic image that was initially supposed to be the jumping off point for my Nipple Series:



That's a woman named Georgia Jones (a famous porn star) on the left and a man named Dick Cheney (a famous porn star) on the right. The grid of gibbets are supposed to be baby bottle nipples.

Anyway, all that said, I thought I'd show you a couple of moments during the process by which I transferred "Waitress #5 (torso)" from this...



To this...



This is me folding the canvas along the new edge, in preparation for the knife. Image-right, already partially stretched over new wood, is the top part of the image, the part that's going to stay. The left side of the image is what's going to be cut off. You can see that I've had to white out a portion of the image so the final product will be white on all four sides.



This is half way through the cutting. Lord have mercy.



Ahhhh, victory!



... or at least what passes for victory in these parts.

Quick additional note about how richer the reds look on the painting as I hold it in my hand compared to the shot several images above: I don't usually do it (because acrylic varnish [not really what they call it, but you get the idea] costs a shitload and my paintings are pretty big), but the image I'm holding in my hand has about five coats of varnish on it. Something about that gloss surface makes the colors pop quite a bit.

Or it could just be the light.

Anyway, the game is afoot and we proceed apace. Whatever that means.

Here is a quick shot of "Waitress #5 (reclining)" as an early work in progress. For modesty sake, I've masked her breasts with a slab of newspaper.



It is now 3 o'clock and I'm going to turn on the Eagles/Cardinals game. Go Birds.