OCTOPUS PAINTING

process

So for this last gallery night(1/18/08) I painted this giant purple octopus on some 2x4' sheets of wood. It was somewhat rushed, and completed in about a week. I seem to work alot better that way. I did a few sketches to sort of figure out how it was going to span across the boards and then sketched it out on the boards with a heavily watered down acrylic. The purplish fill was actually a blast to paint because it was super drippy vicious craft paint that I had added some water to enhance this effect. Letting that dry for a day or so I took on the tedious task of painting the outline. For this I used one of my favorite paints, a can of Rustoleum black gloss. This was actually the same can I had used to paint the similar jellyfish a few months ago and there was just enough left to finish the octopus. They were literally finished together. The paint was sort of annoying because since it was sort of old it had started to dry in the actual can and was sort of like painting glue, really tacky and hard to push around on the porous wood. In the end it took about 5 hours to finish the outline. I was overall pretty happy with the outcome, there were a few things I'd change if I ever were to paint it again but that's pretty much how everything goes. haha anyway so the day finally came to hang it up over at the social. Alot of my friends were in this show, it was so great to see them all. Now that we're out of school and live grown up lives with day jobs our paths cross way less than they should be. Boris had a bunch of leftover paintings from other shows and a few new pieces that were ridiculously good. Kobs had an assload of sick drawings that were beautifully framed and hung in little clusters in the front. His drawings are all wild organic translations of figures. Dave did this super detailed digital sketch of some roses that looked like a etching or small woodcut that he had printed on some canvas and framed. So I finally hung my Octopus. It was hung on a blue wall which looked great with the purple and woodgrain, one problem, my boards were warped as hell. Two of the three boards were twisted one almost 4 inches of the wall the other about 2. What a bummer, I was so dissapointed. Ah well I think if no one buys it I'll either give it to my friend matt or just install it somewhere publicly with a cordless drill and some screws.