Dreams

Maybe I am done with this large painting. Maybe it needs more work.

This one was fun. 

I let myself make up the scene. I almost never do that. I am into copying reality. I usually need a real sample to paint from, or a photo.

Feels like a breakthrough. I draw political cartoons almost daily, have since November 2016, and a lot of those scenes are made up. Sometimes I’ll use a reference photo to get started but many times I don’t. And my last book, Ladybird, featured a lot of drawings from memory or imagination. So all that work has now fed into my paintings, which is exciting. I’m on a mission to get more naïve it seems.

About halfway through this painting, I searched to find a real table lamp like what I had started… and I found some similar but not quite like mine. And of course I found some alligator photos, none very good.

Maybe there's still too much distortion but I think it's ok. The painting looks different in every kind of light. It really glows an unearthly green under the track lights.

Before starting, there was a lot of anguish. What sort of animal felt right? What sort of room? I knew I wanted something dark and green for some reason. And kind of retro.

I am trying to let these newer paintings remain on a more unconscious level. So I am calling this series "dreams". The feeling comes to me and I have to figure out what the feeling looks like as a painting. 

Alligator Dream