Robot Graveyard fiction
I dabble in many things - painting, songwriting, computers, humor, gardening, cooking - and this story is just one of those things. The name of this series came from a series of paintings I painted under the moniker, Robot Graveyard. Presently, I do not know where “Robot Graveyard” the story will lead, but I will dutifully follow for as long as I can stay interested in it. No guarantees. I’m just dabbling afterall.
What is it? Robot Graveyard is an episodic Science Fiction story of robots and humans and space travel and . . . oh, whatever comes to mind as the story unfolds. I will be releasing one episode a week for now (every Monday, I believe), unless something changes. Here's the link: robotgraveyard.wordpress.com (first episode is currently online as I write this)
I have been getting some help from a friend of mine, Steve Murphy, as well as a few of my brothers. Thanks guys! Anyway, check it out, if you're interested.
I was very happy with the purchase of my shiny new canopy. I even got a chance to use it at the last art show in Covington (worked like a charm, by the way). The second time I used it however, it broke.
This painting was done as a commission and turned out quite well. The reference photo was great, catching these two relaxing together on their pillow - the only downside was that there was not much detail in the black dog's face. Anyway, the painting went quick and the client was happy with the result.
This commissioned portrait turned into a marathon painting for me, and I'm still not sure why. It started off simple enough: I marked the position of the figure with a few brush strokes, then went about the business of blocking in the color. No problem there.
Next, I roughed in the bench and gave the figure a face. This may have been the genesis of the problem that arose later on, putting in details too early in the process. More on that later.
The third image just shows more clarification of the bench and the background. From the beginning, the client wasn't sure if she wanted the bench to have the tulip design in the finished painting nor if she wanted the bench to remain white. Since she wasn't sure and since it wasn't much work just to paint in the bench, that's what I proceeded to do. It was additionally decided that the hairdo would be different than in the reference photo, but until I got a new reference photo for the hair, I went ahead with the short, pulled-up hair.
In the fourth picture, I have completed the white tulip bench, and it was decided that the bench would distract a little too much from the figure.
After the decision was made that the white tulip design was too much, I went ahead with a bench from my own imagination, hoping this design would be visually thinner and maybe less cluttered-looking. Ultimately, it was still a little too much.
In the sixth picture I have changed the bench to black, which definitely allowed the figure to stand out more; additionally, I had to lighten the background so the darker bench could be seen. I have also changed the hair to a basic hair-down hair style [though lacking any style at this point, not to mention the artificial-looking color, as I had no reference photo to go by yet].
