October Full Moon #10: Gwen's Silly Skeleton Watercolor

Skeletons, skeletons, skeletons!  I love to draw cartoon skeletons doing funny things!!  Are you inspired by day of the dead? By Halloween? And by silly skeletons?  Ooo, ooo, I am!   And that’s just what I ended up making this moon for the Little Alters project. 

Kimberly Kostal is the recipient and I know how much she loves skeletons.  In fact, last moon, she tried to make one for the alter for me, but got stuck. So, I was excited when inspiration began to strike. Little did I know, I’d hit some rough patches that would hold me back and delay my progress.

Below is the quick sketch I did of the skeleton I planned to create.  I thought I'd be making a bah relief (think embossed or carved effect with paper clay on canvas). But, my body and the universe had other plans and my idea totally changed.  Or so I thought.

Do you find that when Halloween and Dia De Los Muertos time comes, you feel like the world has slowed to a near halt?  This year I feel more in tune with the natural world. This means that my life is naturally turning introspective, the same way the earth is quieting for winter, and creating art is not as easy as other times of the year.  

To read the rest of this post and see final photos, please visit Gwen's blog: 

http://www.calmundertension.com/1/post/2013/11/silly-toon-skeletons-inspire-my-october-moon-alter-piece.html

September Full Moon #8 - Gwen Gyldenege's Dried Up Paint Bits

This month, I send to Nancy. I hope you like these wee little guys!

In my last 2 posts, What Can You Do with a Zip Fizz Tube? and Creating Art from Acryllic Paint that Dried in Your Pallet, you know that I poured out a bunch of fresh and expensive paint, then promptly forgot it and wasted all that colored goodness. In an effort to recover what was lost, I created art for the September Full Moon alter space for the Little Alters exchange project. 

I started with the dried up bits in the pallet you see below and went to my sketch book.  As I was pouring over a lovely strawberry balsalmic martini, I worked with opposites {Dried:Fluid, Useless:Purposeful, etc.} as a way to show that what was deemed trash could actually be discovered to be fun and playful.  

My vision (sketched below) is that out from the pallet where you see the paint actually stuck to the plastic, there's this Mary Poppins Carpet Bag like space where something pops out of nothing.  The paint boys would pop up wearing the dried up paint as hats or even as bum covers if they fell into the paint and got stuck there until the Artist left the studio. 

  

Images copyright (c) 2013 Gwen Gyldenege. All Rights Reserved.

 

I sculpted the guys in 2-part epoxy, then decided to cover the shortened zip fizz tubes with a thin layer of epoxy too so I could paint them.  Then, I attached their dried-up paint hats exactly as I found the paint.  Last, I covered these guys in more than 10 layers of paint, mostly Michael deMeng style but totally focused on matching the paint color of their hat. While they are all a bit redder than I'd choose, their hats were the best dried up bits that resembled a hat. 

 

Images copyright (c) 2013 Gwen Gyldenege. All Rights Reserved.

 

Paint boys, Left Over, Forgotten, and Dried Up, I love you guys!

Images copyright (c) 2013 Gwen Gyldenege. All Rights Reserved.

More of Gwen Gyldenege's work may be found at  http://www.calmundertension.com and http://shesethegoldenegg.com