Creature

Sunday, April 2, 2023

FINALLY DONE!

In the beginning of February, I had a weird idea pop into my head. One night, while painting one of my mountain landscapes where you can see the tree roots, I thought of the roots as tentacles. The vision was so vivid in my head that I knew I had to make it. On Super Bowl Sunday, because I had zero interest in watching either team, I began bringing my creature to life.

The canvas is the largest I’ve ever worked on, 30”x40”. It’s been a labor of love for over a month. I began with a circular gradient from a cream to beige. I then applied crackle effect and after it dried, painted another circular gradient going from Tiffany blue to chocolate brown. When the effect was finished and the paint was dry, I used my new Liquitex spray paint in gold and sprayed the corners and edges. Then it was time to draw the tree.

When the tree was drawn, and after painting dark brown to fill it in, I knew it would need real substance. I knew I wasn’t going to be satisfied with a simple 2-D flat painting. This creature needed to be coming out of the canvas. I was in need of clay. In order to ensure the clay would stick, I applied matte texture paste to the creature. After that dried, the clay fun began. Over the course of three weeks, I painstakingly sculpted my creature, adding texture and depth. Having the tentacles overlapping and the suckers popping. Twisting the branches and limbs and adding a bark texture tree.

Once the clay was to my satisfaction, and completely dry, it was finally time to paint. I knew that I wanted the focus to be on the tentacles… they HAD to be red. The undersides, I decided on blue, adding a blue metallic sheen, as well as making the suckers metallic silver. I decided to have red tentacles fade into the natural brown you would expect from a tree trunk. That wasn’t enough. It was missing something…. GOLD! I used a sponge to add liquid gold leaf and really made the entire creature shine. Being that tentacles belong in the sea, I applied a gloss glaze to them and water effects so there are little pools of water in the suckers and some dripping of the tentacles.

This is, by far, the largest, most time consuming and elaborate piece of art that I think I’ve ever created.

My mind is a scary place.