Monsters Come Alive

In 2020, I planned on having a lot of artwork. If you were with me back then, you know I had an entire wall of frames that I planned on filling with monsters. I even had drawn cartoons (line drawings) of each of the monsters. My husband thought I had done such a great job curating the size, shape, and position of the frames that he thought we should fill them with family photos instead.

I could list all of the reasons, or excuses why those paintings never got finished. Let’s not waste the time.

Today I began to paint the Minotaur. My past self helped me out today. I had done a color study including which tubes of color I had used to create the color study. I vaguely remember that I was going to limit my palette and go for an analogous color palette so I wouldn’t have to paint so much. Haha. Funny I would think that.

I decided to pull in another color. I’m still planning on a mostly green painting but I wanted to be able to shift the temperature of the colors with a few more options. My original color palette included Chromium Oxide, CAD Yellow Light, and Burnt Sienna. I pulled in Cerulean Blue Hue.

I started with the sky. I really wanted to do some gradients and make the grey sky from my color study come alive. I took a tool out of Kimberly Kelli Santini’s tool box and I tried to shift the color temperature each time I went back to my palette to get more paint. It definitely makes the sky more alive and interesting. I’m trying to decide if all this color is a good thing or not.

I added blue not only to the sky, but to the clouds and in the shadows on the bull’s clothing. In some of the darkest shadows, I’ve painted pure Cerulean Blue straight from the tube. I’m pleasantly surprised how effective the blue straight from the tube is in the shadows. I am also surprised by how pink the Burnt Sienna became in the sky. It probably looks so pink because of the blue it is contrasting against.

I had the bull completely painted when I realized that one arm was a lot longer than the other arm. To fix it, I moved the fence and redrew the ends of the arms. Which is a shame since I had already started to “polish the turd” (A turn of phrase my UVU Figure Drawing Instructor liked to use. See my upcoming blog post about polishing a turd.)

Here is where the painting was when my 11:30 am alarm rang and I had to stop:

When I did the color study 2 years ago, I never painted in the golden field of grain. And I really like it without more detail in the field. Even though, I am sure that many people will suggest I finish it, I think it might ruin it.