The Naked Silo

Selections from Sketchbook #19 (2001). Here's the final (very different)  Corona Solis (yankee) . Here's the final (very different)  Corona Solis (zulu) . Here's my final (very similar) double portrait of Alfred Hitchcock . I tried coming up with a bunch of other celebrities to paint portraits of (for illustration portfolio/demonstration to go along with Meg Ryan , Nicole Kidman , Gillian Anderson & David Duchovny , Shirley Manson , and Al Pacino & Robin Williams ), but a few didn't quite make the cut for various reasons, like Michael Keaton (above) and Jimmy Stewart (below). And my finished Harrison Ford painting turned out kind of sub-par. Here's my final (very similar) portrait of Tori Amos .

More selections from Sketchbook #18 (2000-2001). Still dressing people up in Star Trek uniforms (TNG motif featured here). I seemed to be big on puns around the turn of the century. Here, frequent model Ashley Winning gets literalized. (roulette!) There's a conceptual sketch with the post of the  final painting (another pun), but this one's closer to the finished picture. Like the punny painting above, Sue is featured here in a sketch for one of my 26 sunflower paintings (unfortunately, this sketch is a little better than the finished picture).

More selections from Sketchbook #16 (1999-2000). Punny. Almost became a painting. Sketch for one of many Uncle Seth posters . I've been dressing people up in Star Trek uniforms (via sketches, of course) since high school. Preliminary sketches for the eventual watercolour painting Corona Solis (delta) . Working through some ideas for a watercolour featuring C-3PO 's exposed interior as seen in Episode One. Turns out in Episode Two he didn't get his golden coverings, but a dingy grey body instead. But he was 100% golden and shiny in Episode Three, so there's that. This eventually became  Skin .

More selections from Sketchbook #15 (late 1990s). When Episode One came out my friends and I made fun of it at any opportunity that arose. This gag was inspired by my friend, Attila's, suggestion. I drew these guys separately, inked them with a brush in my sketchbook, then scanned them in and composited them in my computer where I coloured them and made the lightsaber effect digitally. I have no idea what happened to that completed illustration...and I don't feel like re-compositing these now. "Dennis the Phantom Menace." It was funny at the time. It's still kinda funny. Ah, sunflowers. These two were done when I first came up with the idea of painting 26 watercolours of women and sunflowers, each one corresponding to the aviation code (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, etc.). By the time I was done I was very sick of painting sunflowers. I still like the actual flowers, though. I've been playing around for years...

Oiseau 11 , 16" x 20", oil on canvas, 2008 Oiseau 13 , 16" x 20", oil on canvas, 2008 Lately there has been a blue jay (perhaps more than one) hanging around our front yard, eating the seeds from the sunflowers we planted here at Small Pond early this summer (the flower bed frame was built and installed by Krista and Georga Ryan , our first Australian resident). I really don't mind their squawking call if it means I get to ctach a fleeting glimpse of their beautiful plumage every now and then. Below are a couple of photos I took at night during a full moon (which looks like the sun in the bottom pic), experimenting with long exposures using my new DSLR (having –only semi-reluctantly– forsaken my Minolta film SLR ). My initial shots looked like they were taken in mid-afternoon with green grass and shadows and everything, so I decided to add flashlights and get some shots that wouldn't be possible in the daylight. Getting the Big Dipper in the up...

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000, private collection This is the same model-from-a-magazine I used in CS (lima) . The ladder was already part of that photo and I wanted to keep it so she didn't look weird just standing there. The dark green background helps to highlight the highlights on her right side and contrasts nicely with the red in her shirt.

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 Elaine Secord makes her fourth and final appearance in the Sunflowers series here, and it's the first one of the series to feature a more naturalistic background, rather than one full of art nouveau graphic design.

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 During one of our several photo shoots (all of which have resulted in dozens of usable reference pics), I took a picture of Ashley in the same pose as the one I took of my model from Awake ...and here it is in my Sunflowers series. That's the same dress that's in CS (november) , but here it's in its actual black and white appearance. Also, you can see the front of the necklace that is visible from behind in CS (golf) and CS (papa) .

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 I graduated the colours of the matrix in this one to resemble a landscape of greenery, water, and sky, with sunflowers on the land and the sun in the sky. However... It was unintentional, I assure you, but there is a phallic implication to this composition (which I don't actually mind), so take it either way. Or both. Sketch (no phallus here). The reference for this model was sourced from a magazine and not my own photograph.

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 This is the first time in the series where the model appears to be physically interacting with a flower –even though the source model wasn't actually interacting with a flower: she was already holding that piece of fabric, but then I added the sunflower and shadow to create the illusion. This model was from a magazine and not from photographic reference I shot myself. She's also the same model that's in CS (quebec).

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 When deciding the sunflower placement for this painting I chose to cover her crotch not out of any censorship concerns, but because it's kinda funny...and it's usually sexier to tease than it is to explicitly reveal. The flower at the top sort of evokes a flower in her hair as well as a halo. This model was from a magazine and not from photographic reference I shot myself.

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 This is the same model as in CS (foxtrot) and I had the same problem of trying to find a suitable place for the flower. Again, I played around in my sketchbook (sorry, not interesting enough to post here) with different arrangements, and, since she's leaning more in this one, and her hand's in that position, a single large sunflower was the best solution. I did try a bit of light bloom around her head by softening the edges, but I still think that effect was better achieved in CS (charlie) . I don't know why I left that triangular negative space grey rather than filling it with more blue matrix...

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 This is the same Kim that's in Without List 2  (and she also appears in the very last painting of the Sunflowers series, CS (zulu) ). To convey a floating feeling, I had her lie on the floor and, after arranging the lights (and her hair to be as flowy as possible), I stood on my coffee table and took the photo. Sketch. The placement of sunflowers didn't change from sketch to painting, and I like how the top flower serves as a halo –a true corona– (a recurring motif in this series). 

  15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 Ashley returns to the Sunflowers series with her back turned to us (my choice; so you can see her shoulders and the dangling part of her necklace). I actually took some time and specifically placed those strands of hair in front of her face like that, leaving a gap to reveal her eye. Early sketch. As always, and well after the photo shoot, I did a few sketches to determine what the background and sunflower arrangement would be. The above sketch was before I decided to include the oval element as a "window" set into the matrix to show the flowers. It also shows that this painting was originally going to be the 8th painting in the series ("hotel"), but, for some reason, it got moved up to "golf."

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 Another flat white halo, but, for some reason, I didn't try rendering a light bloom around the model like I did in CS (charlie) . However, the matrix "radiating" from it (sorta like in this painting ), simulates a stained glass kind of brightness. I painted three sunflowers for compositional balance (one would have been too lonely and two would have been too unintentionally comical if placed in front of her boobs (I tried both variations in my sketchbook and neither option worked)).

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 Once again, Elaine Secord is modelling here. The circular motifs around the sunflowers are heavily inspired by the designs of Alphonse Mucha , my favourite artist in the art nouveau style.

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 Here's Elaine again from the same photo shoot that resulted in so many good pictures that weren't used on Squirm's " Cold " CD, but ended up as paintings. I wanted to give the halo a realistic glow, so I softened the edges around her hair and shoulder, trying to create a blooming effect , which is a photographic artefact I enjoy.

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 I used a number of unused photos from a shoot I did with Elaine for her band's 1998 CD " Cold " as reference for a number of paintings, including my Sunflowers series. Balancing out the background matrix is a sideways "t" form that contains sunflowers...but it has the overall effect of looking (unintentionally) like a flag ( Sweden and Norway and Finland (maybe others...) come to mind). But that's okay with me; they're nice flags.

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 This painting was the first of my Sunflowers series in which I painted 26 pictures of women posing with sunflowers, each identified by parenthetical radio code. Here, Ashley's wearing an outfit made of negative space (I'd been experimenting with negative space in a number of paintings since the mid-90s). The gold in the halo is simple gold paint.

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 There was a helluva storm last night with blustery winds howling through the trees and rain pelting our windows. Our composter flew apart! So I'm making a plea to the weather gods for some sunshine by posting number 14 from my sunflowers series. Here's Ashley yet again. She turns up in a few more of these sunflower paintings -- in one of them, she's wearing the same dress, but in it's in its "correct" colours (black with a white floral pattern; see it in CS (november) ). Making the dress white for this painting was another experiment in flatness and negative space, that is, to see if the forms would read appealingly even if they're not described by shading. A white dress then necessitated either a black floral pattern or a colour. I went with violet to complement the green background. This painting also features an interesting multi-triangle composition (which I somehow didn't notice until well after I ...