Work smarter..

Have you watched the move “Office Space”? There’s this saying repeated throughout the movie about having a “case of the Monday’s” that’s pretty entertaining. In a related vein, try telling someone with perfectionist tendencies like me to “work smarter not harder”. ;) Really. Try it with your favorite overly self-critical artist friends. Duck after you say this. :D

Seriously though, when you do this sort of thing for a living you really seriously MUST work smarter. Each work is an endeavor to balance the airy-fairy idealism of what most perceive fine art to be.. with the brutal cold fact that we are striving to make improvements and yet not invest our lifetimes on one piece in fiddling ad infinitum. I can forever fiddle with the best of em. My artist friends and I all remind each other not to get sucked into the vortex time warp of the never ending work. It’s one thing with a sculpture to put that extra month (or year – coughcough) in. The sales for castings will only pick up the pace as time goes on and the work gets out if all that extra time was well spent (and the converse of that is dire to sculptor to overcome in future sales if a sloppy sculpt escapes the studio). However with individual painted pieces this isn’t so. Sometimes they never get viewed at shows and yet they are a precious addition to a prized coveted collection. I’m not talking about prices. I’m talking about the portfolio that is what gets to shows around the world. So it’s a far bigger gamble for the painting artist to be low-output. (tiny voice -> like me!).

Do I wish I could create amazingly detailed works faster and faster and still maintain my personal hyper-detailing style? Sure. Not entirely realistic unless I’m getting the hang of the media. THIS said however, (big sly grin), I am getting the hang of it in some respects. And for my wee tiny Vixen casting I’ve departed from a paint-over style to a blend-throughout all coats style. This is her in primer.

Red and white primers. So that the final work preserves the crazy insane detail this miniscule piece has. I’m simply stoked! :D

Already I’m not dealing with color blending issues typically seen with appy blankets. I loath the painted on white look and strive (succeed or fail) to really overcome it. And man do I love the silly miniscule hair details. There aren’t any of those yet. She’ll be given several oil layers over this. Ah but the macroscopic view is already inspiring to me and this only makes the crazy close ups (the ones like on that Mindy I’d done earlier this year that can only be seen by camera macros or magnifying glasses) just that much more fun to add in the end. Snoopy dance of joyjoy!

Chestnut mare beware! Heh heh.. (that’s not her name but that’s certainly her motto!)

ps I will (when done) sell her in the usual way. I give the heads up in advance only to my yahoogroup peeps. I haven't decided on the venue. I'm pretty sure I won't be using eBay for a long long time again. I was looking for something for sale there the other day and searching even by it's name and keywords in the auction wouldn't bring it up. Nor would sorting by the price it was currently at. Bad times with the DSR rating system. Not a fan over here.