I made a long soapboxy post…then took it off, because there was at least one big hole in my thinking. Of the “There’s a hole in my thinking, dear Liza, dear Liza” variety, that could not easily be fixed. So, although I’m convinced there is something I want to say, I’m not sure exactly what it is yet.

In between thinking like Henry’s bucket, I’ve been drawing a minotaur. I took this picture as a memento before starting the hands, because hands are Mr Cockup’s favourite rendezvous point.

I’m glad I took the picture, because it shows me clearly what I evidently couldn’t see by looking at the original, namely that there needs to be a dark shade on the head — or possibly around it, but up there somewhere — I’ll try out both in Photoshop and see which works — to balance out those two heavy dark areas, or the viewer’s eye will keep getting drawn to the elbows rather than the head. A couple of places could do with sharper definition lines, and that eye needs to be something other than white. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t stand out very distinctly — the white looks too undead.

This is my first time using a blending stump. I over-used it on the torso, but basically I like it, especially on a drawing like this where I want the subject to look solid and still.

Anyway, tomorrow…hands.

Used a photo ref off a gay eye candy site for this one. Shadows enhanced in PS. Getting totally into these bandit masks.

I’m so glad I stumbled across the works of painter Heather Nevay. Born in Glasgow in 1965, she studied at the Glasgow School of Art. Her paintings are rich and detailed and replete with symbolism, often featuring children (with faces like early Northern Renaissance portraits), surprised, as writer and film maker James Burge puts it, “in the middle of some incomprehensible ritual, staring out at us with hostility and contempt.”

The Sleeping Boy and The Mourning of Mister Lambe from Nevay’s exhibition this month at The Portal Gallery.

Nevay says: “I’m interested in the games in which children take part which fall into traditional roles and activities. I look at the duplicity of the play which is often the cause of misinterpretation of adult onlookers. I am not storytelling but I want to offer a glimpse of a scene which will continue after our gaze has moved on. I don’t want to paint horrific scenes, but sometimes I have to create an atmosphere of uncomfortable feelings.”

Heather Nevay’s home page — lots of pictures, and the bio includes the article quoted above.

Some of you may remember the picture with the blindfold (completely utterly unsafe for work, unless you work in a whorehouse).

The blindfold is back. I needed a model, really — looked at a few photos but couldn’t find a figure in this position.

Anatomy and %$@#! hands aside, I kinda like what I did here. Might explore this direction some more. (I know: first no eyes, now no nose or mouth. I was inspired by Duncan Regehr‘s drawings of Zorro, who he also played on TV. Little did I know, when in the first budding of my sexuality I went batshit for Dirk Blackpool (for younger viewers, yes, men really did wear their hair like that in 1983), that the actor playing him was an accomplished artist. I suddenly have a jones to watch W&W again… )

This has been a challenging year, physically and mentally. I think this picture I drew this morning says something about it. The minotaur might be the animus (because I always seem to express myself through the animus when there’s something wrong), and the moon, I’m pretty sure, is psychological disturbance:

The blood spatter was an accidental blot, so I did more blotty shading with my fingers, which I’ve never tried before. Then used a makeup brush, which worked quite well, except that there was eyeshadow on it which came off in the ink, so that there’s a silvery bit on the original. Background tones added in PS, as the paper was too flimsy for a wash.

This poor minotaur needs another drawing. He needs his arms and his right hind leg. But I like the blotty shading, although I could have planned the tones a little better.

In addition to Who Killed Bambi, which I’ve mentioned before, in hunting around for images by Aloise Corbaz I found two other art sites that I really like, Artminut and Random Index. Artminut in particular — at a cursory glance — seems to showcase more female artists than many art blogs do (or at least, the ones I seem to find, anyway).

A few favourites:
Benedetta Bonichi [home page]
Christopher Conn Askew (especially La Penitente!) [home page]
Mari Shimizu [home page]
Richard Laillier [home page]

From Monster Brains, an awesome site for weird art, the real-unreal and beautifully executed animal paintings of Laurie Hogin (second on page). [Home page, article]

And from Pink Tentacle, the anatomy of Japanese folk monsters!

Still out of the cave. Recently I’ve been looking at outsider art, and have noticed that most of the artists to whom space and thought (at least online) have been given are — no big surprise — male. So I searched for female outsider artists, and found Aloise Corbaz, a Swiss woman who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1918 and committed to a mental hospital, where she remained for the rest of her life.

Unlike the majority of those labelled “outsider artists”, she was well educated. Her work, which she began in secret around 1920 (most of her early output was destroyed), portrays a protean, unlimited world in which her own image is prominent, in the midst of suitors, historical figures, and characters from opera; flowers abound, colours are brilliant, and the general mood seems to be one of untrammelled love, play, indulgence and delight — in a realm where everyone has big blank blue eyes, as if to signify that they are immortals, or ideational rather than corporeal beings (but one would have to ask Aloise). Sometimes the gaiety seems to take on a sinisterly desperate, Weimar cabaret sort of tone — but it’s hard to be sure whether the figures’ expressions are meant to appear crazed or simply passionate.

Cloisonné de théâtre, 1951, coloured pencil, oil pastel and thread on paper.
Photo: Philip Bernard. Source: Raw Vision

waterloo / marie stuart / werther / tosca
Source: Random Index — larger image there

Source: Ubuweb

(Valkyrie as Madonna?)
Source: Ubuweb

Her doctor, Jacqueline Porret-Forel, who along with hospital director Hans Steck, took an interest in her work, wrote:
“The world as recreated by Aloïse is cosmic and insubstantial, free of physical contingencies, in opposition to the old natural world she knew before her ‘death,’ that is before her illness. It is a supernatural world, theater of the Universe, thronged with immutable, hieratic actors whose deeds and feelings are expressed by the tiny hieroglyphic figures around them. Furthermore, their very essence is uncertain. They may be themselves and yet simultaneously represent something else. A woman may be herself and at the same time her icon … or a living lantern … or an allegory.”

The part following “furthermore” rang a solipsistic bell for me, as it could be a description of what goes on in my head. To me, it makes perfect sense that a person (certainly a person in art or fiction, and perhaps a person in everything but the bodily sense too) could be themselves, an icon, an allegory, and a living lantern. That they could be seems much more likely than that they couldn’t be.

Sources: Ubuweb (also has images — if the link doesn’t show up, it’s at the bottom left of the picture), Wikipedia, Japan Times, Raw Vision, Random Index (go to main page for vintage tattoos, strange and beautiful art, and just plain strange art).