Spring is here...kind of...

It's although it is barely above freezing where I live, the snow is almost completely gone. It feels like spring.

This painting is made for Alison in Massachusetts who was kind enough to buy a Panda gift certificate that I donated to a silent auction at my son's school. It's a long travel for a silent auction.

Alison asked for a painting that would remind here that winter will eventually be over. Then she added, "I've also been drawn to fiddlehead ferns lately. Random, I know!".

Not random at all. The fiddlehead is a great symbol for spring. It's new growth, new life. (and you can eat it).

I painted most of the fiddlehead with a Chinese brush. One with long, skinny, wiry bristles. (I'm sure it has a name but... I don't know it). This is one of the brushes I bought in San Francisco at an art supply store in China Town. It was in 2001 and I was on my honeymoon happy and throwing my money around. I didn't use them for a couple of years but now this brush is a favorite. It doesn't seem to wear out. (your not supposed to use the same brush for a decade).

I set up this painting with sumi ink (new) and that is most of the black here. I has a beautiful rich tone. ...however it will rub off of gessoed wood with a wet rag. I'll do a layer of gloss medium on top to stop that from happening... and to make it nice and shiny. I like my work to be relatively indestructible.I'm of the "wood will rot before the pigment goes away" mentality.

Sometimes, I still get into arguments with myself about how much I should define in an object when painting. You would think that after making so many paintings (over 40 on this blog alone) I would have it down to a science... but I'm obviously not a scientist. Every new painting as a challenge. I question how I treat each one. This probably facilitates constant artistic growth.... but from a business standpoint I'm a nightmare.

Anyway... Thank you, Allison! I'll mail the painting once it's dry and water resistant.

In Other News: I've been rebuilding my personal website. Recently I've added many images (more than doubled) and divided them into galleries by subject matter. I've also added some brief texts talking about each gallery. I think this will make the site more enjoyable to look at. I'll keep adding things as I make them.

Soon there will also be a store where you can purchase some of the work on that site with ease. So check it out at :

http://www.johnmegas.com/

...and here is a link to some fiddlehead fern recipes... including cream of fiddlehead soup. If you try any of them, leave a comment...

Fiddlehead Recipes

Beloved...and some cup cakes...

I made this painting last December but have been waiting to post it. Linda, who is a regular reader of this blog, commissioned it as a gift for her friend A's birthday. ...But the birthday wasn't til today ...so I've been sitting on it as not to ruin surprise. It's been living on the corner of my painting table and I have been making small changes here and there over the past 2 month's while working on other things.

Linda gave me some information about A and told me to take it from there. She sounds like a fun and busy person. The thing Linda stressed most here was to involve swing dancing with a round skirt in motion. Linda also gave me the word "beloved" to express her feeling toward her friend. When I pushed her for more... she added cupcakes.

The cupcakes on the shoes was Beth's idea. She pulled that out of nowhere and made a crude drawing of it. I wish I could find that drawing. (I used the acupuncture needle brush for the tiny cupcakes).

I like this painting and am impressed because I don't think it looks like I painted it. The mother of one of Theo's friends came to our house a couple of months ago and saw my painting set up. She asked "Do you paint?", and then saw this painting in the corner and said, "oh, your wife paints". She thought this must have been painted by a woman. What a compliment! "I pulled it off", I thought. I made a decent painting of a skirt and shoes.

Before posting this, I emailed Linda and asked her if there was anything she wanted me to write (or not write) here as I do before posting some one's painting. She is the first person to actually give me something. I usually get "whatever you want". Than I go on about phrenology or Teddy Roosevelt.

Here is what she said:
I think I would say that I didn't know how you would capture such a will-o-the-wisp person in a painting...but you did...the joyousness of it is the key.

Thank You Linda!
...and Happy Birthday A!!!

...still struggling...

I've painted and repainted my niece's portrait many times now. I can't get it. In a small painting slump... so I'm going to move on and do one more painting and then go back. I think I just need to find a new way to approach this... But I'll get it.
I've been more industrious working on some larger landscape paintings. Landscape is something new for me and I'm very excited about it. These pieces all involve power lines and antennae and the clutter that makes our lifestyles possible. All of this working on principles that feel like harnessed magic. These paintings are ambiguously narrative in nature.
I'll post them on my website (www.johnmegas.com) when I update and revamp it. Soon...

Pretend with me and ...

You will have to just pretend that I drew something beautiful and interesting and funny above as a preliminary sketch for the next blog painting. This new one is for my teenage niece, Julia, who wanted me to do a painting of her smiling in a blue shirt. I did a few sketches of this but they all turned out bad. Really bad. Too embarrassing to post.
(Take a moment and imagine those, too).

The sketches that I made of her looked like something that a junior high or high school kid would draw in their notebook, desperately grasping at drawing something recognizable rather than thinking of a whole. I was feverish and heavy handed, trying to make a sweet resemblance. Sometimes very sympathetic to whoever I'm painting for. In this case I think I transported myself back to high school.

It's many ways it's odd that I've started to post preliminary sketches, since I have been doing fewer and fewer of these recently. After about 40 paintings here, I've become more comfortable with just starting and working it out on the board. My skills have sharpened. The real reason for making these preliminary posts is to have a chance to talk about a painting before I've started it. While I'm still a little lost. ...and I always ask for comments or suggestions...

I started this painting this morning and am already nearly finished. It's now coming easy for me. (kind of).

I'll post the Julia painting later this week...

Cleaning An Entire World's Worth of Carpet...

Allen owns and operates his own one man Service Master franchise. He wanted me to portray him cleaning the many, many miles of carpeting he has traveled over the years. He speculates that it is probably equal to the circumference of the Earth. Joan is a talented pianist. All she asked for was a musical reference. Together they are my in laws (Beth's parents) and this is there Christmas present.

I truly turned this one into an an exercise in miniature painting. So much subject matter in such a small space. I maybe should have tried to simplify it but instead I made it more complicated. Joan said I could just put in a few musical note to represent her here but instead I placed Joan on a satellite serenading all of the heavens. It seemed more interesting to me.

This was a difficult painting. The subject matter here is so unusual that I felt every element had to be ridiculously clear. The carpet cleaning wand has to really look like a cleaning wand to put across that he is sucking up dirt from the stratosphere of the Earth... as if it were a carpet. Your mind doesn't just automatically go there and fill in details.

But, the color on this painting presented the most problems for me. I wanted to keep a consistent, limited color scheme but with such tiny piece I found that objects began to blend in with one another. It turned into a matter of really pushing the values and making the images very symbolic and not natural. (If you haven't noticed, the scale of human to Earth size is also slightly off.) The the fact that the entire back is space suggested a very dark background that I eventually lightened up some. (Though this would have been a great candidate for black velvet...).

This was a hard one. But I don't ask for easy, that would make this project dull. And I'm pleased with the result.

Thank You, Allen and Joan!

In other news... The Hellenic Voice interviewed me about the Panda Licking on a Light Bulb yesterday and they will run an article about me and the blog either late January or early February. I'll give more information when I get it...

...in the meantime, I have a line up of paintings so I'd better get crackin'...

A Preliminary Cleaning Sketch...

This Christmas, instead of shopping, I decided to give some of my family members paintings. I handed them a Panda Licking on a Light Bulb Gift Certificate. I wasn't sure how this would go over... but it seemed get a good reaction after explanation. To my surprise, everyone had an idea for their painting almost immediately.

This one is for my in laws, Allen and Joan Scandrette. Beth's parents.

Allen is a carpet cleaner and owns a Service Master franchise. ... but the entire franchise is them. He does all the cleaning himself and Joan takes care of the business end. Allen likes to tell people that over the past three decades he thinks he has cleaned enough carpet to go around the entire world once.

After thinking about it, I bet he's right. Working five days a week over thirty years. And walking backwards the whole way with that cleaning wand in front of him. (No wonder here's in better shape then I am).

Imagine an entire world covered in carpet and you have to walk the whole way with your back to where you're going. Over oceans, up mountains, down gorges... you get it. All carpeted. Everything you've just passed getting dirty again. You're walking backwards so you see it all happening. You yell, "be careful with that milk shake...take off your shoes...pick up that leaky pen... keep the cat in the bathroom!"....and so on and so on. A kind of blue collar Sisyphus myth... but lucrative.

..anyway, Allen described to me the image of he and his wand cleaning across the entire Earth as it hangs in the heavens. I think this is a great! Joan is a very talented pianist and wants to have music involved in this. Cleaning to her piano? I haven't figured that part out yet...

Above is a preliminary drawing. I don't know how close I will follow it. Feel free to leave a comment here with any idea you may have to help. I'll consider all comments and run them but the Scandrettes.

The finished painting will be posted next week.

By the way, the Gift Certificates are still available. $53. It's a great gift for anyone. Anyone!

Panda Hugging on a Strawberry.

Happy Anniversary! Today marks one year with the Panda! Even thought he Panda sometimes gets difficult and crabby and often smells wrong, it has been a good year.

It seemed fitting to ask Beth to give me the one year request. She is the genius who insisted on the original Panda Licking on a Light Bulb painting. I talked about it in the first post Why is the Panda Licking on a Light Bulb? one year ago. But there is a part of the story that I didn't include there. She actually threw out another painting idea before Panda Licking on a Light Bulb which was Panda Hugging on a Giant Strawberry. I had forgotten about this (somehow) until she reminded me here. Now this too has been fulfilled (making dreams come true ?)... in the requested style of Calef Brown (... kind of).

One of the most interesting things about Calef Brown's work (beyond the flat stylized shapes, exaggerated proportions and improbable colors) is his unusual use of line. While the objects are almost never outlined, their interior features are often exclusively defined by simple lines. Strangely, those lines are often the same color as the background. This makes this confusing... in a good way. Brown's painting are seemingly simple but incredibly tricky... and funnier than hell.

I finished this painting late last night. I thought I was finished earlier in the day but then I took it out and looked at it, again. To my horror, I saw that I made his arms and legs waaaayyyy too loooooooong. It was a ring-tailed lemur hugging on a giant strawberry. Exaggeration is one thing but animal metamorphosis is another.

I kind of love this goofy painting. It's a great start to a new year.

Thank you everyone for reading and participating in this project over the last year. Tell your friends about the blog. They might like it. The more the merrier. ..and leave comments. ...always good to here from you.

...and Thank You, again, Beth. I love, love, love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!