As I wander through our collection of bones here at home (the by-product of being hikers and amateur naturalists), I can see the beauty in each of these relics; the very richness of existence itself. They tell a story - where they were found, what condition the bones are in, how the teeth are worn, which pieces are missing...and so my own bones, still inside my body, have a story to tell. And my muscles and teeth and the lines upon my face. And the hands that painted this piece. There is beauty in a life well-lived. About the art - the AI bot and I often play with skeletons. It seems to like them, and is very wiling to dress them up. The folder of inspiration images for cheeky skeleton compositions is rather large. But this one! The colors, the texture, the nod to traditional portraiture and the wistful gaze of a skeleton lady missing her love - it grabbed me by the hand and said PAINT! So I did. The focus in creating this pieces was making the forward figure three-dimensional and the portrait figure flat, along with the textured "wallpaper" which implies the natural decay of our surroundings. Another piece that leaped from the paint, intuitive and joy-filled in the creating. Thanks to everyone who participated in the September Reader Giveaway! Your comments make this blog space deeply meaningful and community-centered. I am so very grateful.
Wonder Mike chose three winners this month - congratulations to Gretchen, Carl and Sara! Send your mailing address to [email protected] and your original artworks will be on the way in a jiffy. Look for a new contest beginning a week from today.
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 Don't Expect This To Be Scientifically Plausible - LISTEN to the blog by clicking the DOWNLOAD link below "Don't Expect This To Be Scientifically Plausible" oil on cradled wood panel, 24 x 12 x 1.5 inches. This item is unframed but ready to hang. (click on the image to purchase) Yes, don’t expect this novella to be scientifically plausible. It’s not. It’s a totally absurd, tongue-in-cheek mishmash of the most popular time travel tropes, juggled with admirable deftness and self-awareness by the angry old man in the center of the story. Time travel serves here only as a literary vehicle for funny and sharp critique of our human foibles and vices and prejudices. And if we can get an adorable, feathered, man-eating dinosaur as a bonus, all the better. - RE-ENCHANTMENTOFTHEWORLD.BLOG
About the art: oh, you may have guessed the AI bot loves rabbits. It is fully willing and able to imagine rabbits in every possible scenario, style and genre of art. Ask it for an angry rabbit at the end of the world, and you'll get dozens of grin-inducing inspiration images. This piece is all about that black rabbit and the vivid sky. Soft paint layers here on gesso'd wood panel. I kept the setting very neutral and understated, with the color focus behind the rabbit and within his eyes and nostrils. A hint of tiny utility lines running through the sky and resisting the desire to overly define the structures was key to shining the spotlight on the rabbit. I can't look at this piece without chuckling a bit. Sometimes embracing the absurd is just the thing to soothe the spirit. It is the final week to enter the September Reader Giveaway! Leave a comment (or more than one) this month to enter. The winner will be announced right here on September 30th.
Thank you to everyone who reads, comments and shares this blog space and the art within it. Giving away a portion of what I create is my way of showing my deep gratitude for all of you, dear readers! Thank you hugely!
But there is something otherworldly about standing in that unrelenting surf and trying to see and feel what is beneath you. On our last adventure, the rocks and beach were covered in jellyfish parts - glistening, undulating, sparkling like the agates we were hunting. I poked a lot of parts - making sure they weren't treasures. I grabbed a lot of parts rolling in the waves. There was mist, fog, frigid wind and an angry ocean that day. The two of us, standing in that madness, filling our packs with the largest agates we have yet seen, all alone on that endless, moody beach - a new dimension of beauty and strangeness and wonder. Did I rest my face on a large fish? No, I did not. But I would have if I could have. :)
About the art: the AI bot and I have had a wildly good time trying to make mermaids. It doesn't get mermaids well, nor centaurs nor griffins. There are all manner of weirdly wrong results. But sometimes you get a sweet moment between a lady and a fish, like this one. Painted alla prima in two stages: the underpainting and initial sketch in the first go, and the subsequent layers all in a second go after letting the first one dry thoroughly. The inspiration image had a very limited color palette, with background and characters barely distinguishable from one another. I tried to maintain the integrity of that effect, while also pulling both lady and fish forward with some sculpting highlights. The final touches were the dripping paint from mouth of the fish and the highlight in the surface below the lady. Again, the temptation to go back in and overly define everything was hard to resist, but I wanted to keep the pale, fleshy, wateriness of the piece intact. So I walked away. The September Reader Giveaway continues! Leave a comment (or more than one) this month to be automatically entered. The winner will be announced on September 30th. On your mark, get set, GO!
About the art: this piece is inspired by an image the AI bot created, which was a surprise interpretation of the prompt I had supplied. But I often find those random, wonky images are just exactly what I needed (but didn't know I was looking for). When I saw this one, I connected with her right away - somewhat masked (the eyes) and stern looking, but with torn tights and mismatched gloves and a tutu that was clearly falling apart. Ha ha! As usual, the Yupo allowed a pretty rapid building of the layers of color, and the ability to create texture within the paint. Keeping a nice mixture of hard and soft lines was key with this one, along with varying the reds just enough that her chair stood out but did not distract from the figure. A bit of paint thinner was added to the edges of her skirt to allow some runs and smudges. Kind of a modern version of The Thinker. The September Reader Giveaway continues! Leave a comment (or several) this month to be entered to win a piece of original art! The winner will be announced here in the blog at the end of the month.
About the art: Wonderland is never far from my imagination. It was just a matter of time before the Queen of Hearts made another appearance. And in this one, her voice VERY LOUD, she asks for (nay, DEMANDS) exactly what she wants. This is one of those pieces that happened easily, relatively swiftly and without much gnashing of teeth. A neutral underpainting, a quick sketch with brush and dark paint, layers of walnut-oil thinned paint on skin and clothing. A little extra care with the focal point (her open mouth) and a full RESIST RESIST RESIST when I wanted to keep fussing with it. I mean, if you get what you ask for, stop and enjoy it - don't keep fussing at it. Sheesh. Artists are troublesome. :) The September Reader Giveaway has begun! Leave a comment on a blog post this month and be automatically entered. Leave multiple comments to be entered as many times! The winner will be drawn at random at the end of the month, and will receive a piece of original art - free! Hooray!
About the art: continuing an exploration of a mash-up of robot and human as in the ballgown bot series, except this time exposing the vulnerable flesh of humanness with the slight augment of the cyborgian (is that a word?). The goal with this piece was to embrace the neutrality of the figure coloring and allow the background and the robotic arm pieces to be the only obvious color. As always, the Yupo allows an easy, relatively rapid layering of oil paint, and also the ability to carve back through it (the background design elements and the artist's signature) to expose a pale pink underpainting. This piece just oozes strength and bold badassery to me. Yaaaaasssss please. Congratulations to Dotty and Marta! Wonder Mike chose your names at random as winners of the August Reader Giveaway! Send your mailing addresses to Wonder Mike at [email protected] and your free art will be shipped to you lickety split! And thanks so much to all who participated. A new contest begins next month! Hooray!
The ballgown bots are something I stumbled upon that delight me and seem to feel effortless under my hands. But it is a rarity, this sense of ease in the paint. As I gaze upon the pile of canvases and boards to be painted over (my share of duds) I am decidedly grateful for a wizardly moment with the paint. About the art: this is a paint-over of a very old acrylic piece on crescent board. Though I chose the underpainting because of its color and depth, ultimately none of it remains in this new painting. The focus of this piece is that small section of skin against the dark background - a wee bit of humanity within the monstrous. After a light pencil sketch, I began layering the darks, painting around the form until the shapes were just so. Resisting the desire to overly define the skin shadows, letting shapes speak instead. Layers and layers of pink and gold for the dress, wet into wet so the edges slightly blur into the dark background like gauzy silk. Mixing the darkest darks for bodice and underskirt (while avoiding actual black) and then a slightly gray-brown dark for the background. Playing one dark against the other. Allowing a small shape within the headpiece to say "eye" and a dark shape to say "ear" and leaving the rest to the viewer's eyes. This piece makes me smile. She's a badass for sure. It's the final week to enter the August Reader Giveaway! Leave a comment to be automatically entered to win a free piece of original art! The winner will be announced in next week's post.
Part of the art of the trapdoor is being present with where you are within it - are you in the terror and longing? Are you in surrender? Are you in the singing of the small voice of your soul? Not forcing, just accepting, having faith that it is, indeed, a process that you will move through and emerge from - you see, I know this, but doing it is something else entirely. Sigh. But I am learning to look at these experiences as I would a painting - some of them emerge from their "ugly" phase and become something radiant. Some are just practice pieces that are huge fails on their own, but teach me something that will make the next one easier, better, more. These small, incremental shifts in seeing challenging experiences just a little bit differently will one day pay off. Just watch - I'll be gliding my way through effortlessly and gracefully. Well, that's the goal, anyway. About the art: hello, Yupo - it is always nice to be on your playground, where layers build brilliantly and paint glides like butter. For this piece, the main focus was capturing the mottled tones of the main character's face, which came only after the 80 millionth layer. But at that moment - voila! Such satisfaction. The folds and lines in the clothing are created by using a small rubber wedge to carve back through the paint. Yupo is the only substrate I've found that this works so smoothly with. The August Reader Giveaway is in full swing! One (or more) lucky readers will win a free piece of art! Just subscribe, read and comment anytime in the month of August to enter. Already subscribed? Just comment to enter! Comment multiple times during the month and be entered as many times. WHOA! Wonder Mike LOVES sending free art each month. The winner will be announced here in the blog at the end of the month. Ready? Set? ENTER!
 "Number is Portal" - oil on gallery-wrapped canvas, 30 x 10 x 1.5 inches.
 "Understanding is Joy" - oil on cradled wood panel, 24 x 12 x .75 inches
About the art: these pieces were all painted alla prima (wet into wet), beginning with a very wet background of darks and building the layers in increasing thickness toward the lights. What I learned through many iterations is: the details get in the way with these - a hint is better than full disclosure, a clue rather than an answer. For several pieces, I fell into the mistake of overly detailed fluffy clouds, which looked, I don't know, contrived and meh. A squeegee across the wet paint immediately improved everything. After a long drying time, a final coat of varnish on the wood-based pieces added depth and deepened the darks. It's time to begin the August Reader Giveaway! Subscribe! Read! Comment! Be automatically entered to win an original artwork - FREE! The winner will be announced at the end of the month. Ready? Set? WIN!
About the art: another piece on dreamy Yupo, involving many layers and lots of drying time. The goal with this painting was to catch that bit of light on the boy's face and forward hand, to play with fabric and folds and to amp up the value contrast. Playing the "hard" red/orange background against the soft earth-toned left side border felt really effective. And the diagonal bit at the top right gives a sense of depth and movement. Thank you to everyone who left comments this month and entered the July Reader Giveaway! Wonder Mike had a tough time choosing, and so there are THREE winners this month. Congratulations to Charlynn, Lisa C-G and Thamer! Please send your mailing address to Wonder Mike at [email protected]. A new contest begins next month! Huzzah!
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AuthorLola Jovan 
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