my little wire ladder

steel & copper wire, appx. 8-10 cm across,
work in progress/study sketch

So i've been slowly, very slowly working on this ladder for this June letters painting that is no longer about the June letters:


[detail, no June letters]

A few layers before this (that had been miserably wiped off, layers of orchres, reds, corals), it had these black letters on it:



And right before that was this:



So really, i have come back to a blank canvas again, just a few shades darker:



Well, not totally blank, as i do see an image of a ladder on it. Hopefully, it will take me somewhere to completion...



Coincidently, the last couple of days, i've been walking on these trail steps made out of wooden planks that look like little ladders. They are scattered around on various trails in the woods and for some reason, it gives me such a thrill to walk on them. That is a good sign, no? Painting is still so new and such a struggle for me, so i could use all the good signs out there for it.

not much

I wish there was more to show for the current state of the June letters but as it is, there just isn't much yet.

It looks like i probably won't even incorporate the letters themselves. at least not on this panel. I am painting the words right onto the wooden panel instead of hammering the cut-out letters onto it as originally planned.

The letters* went through several stages, creating new canvases in the process of it:



The panel above is this new [unfinished] painting below--


[previous post of a detail image of this]



These became the pink series. I thought the letters could work being separated on a series of mini panels but doing so broke up the words into just meaningless letters.



Below, i was feeling so giddy, thinking these are the colors and this would be the final stage. All the letters fit on the panel perfectly, leaving out just the question mark...


But the words are just on the surface and they need to be etched deeper somehow.

-------------
*These letters came from a line in one of John Keats' poems, To the Ladies Who Saw Me Crown'd:

Or June that breathes out life for butterflies?

colors of june & august

more on this later... (if i get anywhere with it)

new mini pink series?

oil & mixed media on wooden panel, 6"x 6" each

May, look what came out from the comment you left me on that pink painting (the first one above is supposed to be a mini version for you but it did not turn out as good as i thought it would...so it may have to be reworked into something else...)



I thought i could make use of the June letters to use on these but they are not working well with any of them. Just as Uschi suggested here, the background for those letters does need to be on a longer and slimmer canvas...and i was so excited thinking these letters will be my fastest completed works yet.

Instead, more new problematic paintings to add to my pile of unfinished works!

june letters not going anywhere

This is giving me a headache pissing me off...!

polka dots and nipples

pencil and oil on wood panel, detail of the panel for June letters [work in progress]

Okay, i have to put off writing about those 3-d sketches i had been posting up lately. It is just looking too bland here when in real life my head is just spinning with colors.

Above is the new panel i painted for the June letters which i think is going to be repainted again because i'm just not too crazy about how it will go with them newly painted blue-grey letters here...


It's a vicious cycle with this painting and repainting when i don't have the letters together on the panel to compare and contrast. Got to just hammer down the letters onto the board once everything is dry and get going.

And at the exact moment while i was thinking about this today, look what caught my attention:


I saw it on the ground out of nowhere on my way home. Is it a sign or what? same color as the painting that i was just thinking to repaint!

It happened to be dead, which saved me from agonizing over whether to take it home with me or not just so i can take a picture of it. (I am also starting a bug collection, by the way.) It is now sitting on top of one of my gessoed papier mache bowls.

pineapple pinecones

Do people know that pinecones could look like this?

I never knew that the top (bottom?) could be so round and flower-like. I picked it up to do something with it, thinking that it's some kind of special mutant one. I showed it to John and he made it like that is how all pinecones look like when i expressed my amazement at it. So i told him, No, actually, it is a pineapple. A baby one. And guess what? He believed me. ahahha. let's all point and laugh at him. heheh.

But he was kind of right though...it's not really a mutant one. I found these all over the ground yesterday! I forget that pine trees got their own blossoms in the springtime, too.



Below is the same pineapple cone from the first picture, which looks more like the pinecone i'm familiar with. Can't believe it took me so long to see the other side of it.



And guess what else? Those letters (letters for June) you see in the background are not fitting the way i want them to on any of the black series paintings i'm working on! Too BIG. After all the cutting and sanding and painting them. Now still gotta go and make some more new ones. This time i'll do some measurements.

Or should i make a bigger panel to fit them fat letters? hmmm...

letters for june

Yesterday i came up with a very good use of a door i found. I used the backing board of it to cut out some letters to use for one of the black series paintings i've been working on.

There is this line i really like from some poem mentioned in one of Anne Carson's books. It has the words JUNE and BUTTERFLIES in it. I've been trying to paint the text onto the painting but kept messing up. Now i can just cut out the letters and paint them individually as sloppily as i want, and then glue/nail them onto the painting. I hope it works...

<-Current state of the door found in the dumpster area outside my apt->

It's from the apt across from me, and apparently, my recent ex-neighbor had punched a hole in it. He was a very angry person at times.

There was stuff moving around inside the hollowness of the door when we picked it up. I thought it was some secret hidden treasure, like some family jewels or something. John thought it might be drugs.

Well, it turned out it was just some pieces of wood that came loose inside, probably when the angry neighbor dude punched it.