Munny, Updated.

Being that many other more pressing matters lay at hand in the past, I didn't have much chance or motivation to take pictures of an in-progress Munny. I decided upon the Owl-design, as you can see above. Some of the symbols I wish to add are yet to be added, or have only been touched upon, but include:

-A single strand of silver hair, of which I have many more at the moment...

-Mariachi pants: I have always wanted a pair of those.

-Purple shirt alludes to my favorite symbolic color, Tekehelet (תכלת), a mysterious violet-purple whose original dye-recipe has been lost.

-Feet of clay (from the Bible, alluding to human fragility)

-Bugs in the hair (in the Vanitas genre of paintings, bugs alluded to Sin)

-Hebrew text of יהוה (YHWH) Yod-He-Vav-He, The Tetragrammaton--on the right hand, Dexter.

-Hebrew text of שָׂטָן (Satan) on the left hand, Sinister.

-A Tarot card behind the mask's string, not sure which to depict yet, thinking of The Fool, Death, The Hermit or The Hanged Man (my favorites)

-Additional masks to cover the already-masked face, more pictures of those to come.

Munny on My Mind...

So I've been wanting to paint my Munny for awhile. After some technical difficulties*, I am finally devising a schematic of what it would look like (in my mind). Actually painting it will come later. I am currently thinking: which artists inspire me the most, currently? What simple, direct color scheme would I use?

Some Examples
More Examples (LA Show)
More Examples (Mini Contest)

*Involving sticky acrylic that had to be sanded down

UPDATE! Some of my sketched-out designs...

UPDATE! 3-12-08
Inspired by Goya's Owls, I have decided to do another sketch. (see above fourth/last sketch in sequence)

Owls can be symbols of:
-Superstition (Goya)
-Heresy (Medieval Europe)
-Wisdom (Animist/Pantheist religions)
-Christ's Vigilance (Aderdeen Bestiary)

So I decided I liked the ambiguity of that image, as a mask.
 The theme will be a "self-portrait" of sorts, with traditional green-ink tattoos of YHWH on the Dexter (Right) side and Satan on the Sinister (Left) side. Other ideas I am toying with include feet of clay, and/or a trompe l'oiel magnifying glass on the belly-button to signify the navel-gazing qualities of the self-portrait...

My color scheme will be a simple warm-cool dichotomy, probably emphasizing reverse contrast through saturation levels.

Stay Tuned!!

My Life-Long Dreamytime Sequelmakery

Ghouls'n Ghosts was one of the most influential games I ever played. It has even guided, in some ways, my aesthetic when it comes to the very modus of Paintery Itself.

Here is a piece I wrote about this game, Hosted and Compiled by the venerable Mike Bevan and his Destroy all Monsters!.

And I present, once again, Ghasts'N Ghouls.


Of course, I have played with many other ideas...

...A Riddle?

How can one distinguish between a species and a mutant, if the representative creatures of both groups are long since dead or missing?

The Story Behind L'Académane

The title is a pun, an invented French compound of L'Académie (The Academy) and the suffix -mane (Maniac). The English translates as, predictably, "The Academaniac"

In France, L'Académie is also a vernacular shortening (coincidentally) for L'Académie Francaise, the body of minds considered to have compiled and officiated over what is "appropriate" in the language and grammar of the true Francophone. Anyone who deviates from these strictures is considered non-Francophone, or rather considerd a francophone. This would include many French dialects.

L'Académane is me, or at least what I could be, if I were more obsessive about erudition than I already am. The book-for-a-head motif is a nod to Arcimboldo's The Librarian. It also relates to the idea of being a collector of books as things rather than of the knowledge within them. I chose the monochromatic scheme to convey a sense of re-entering a world that is preserved and antiquated, the very concept of transmission of learning through dried pulp pages becoming more and more obsolete and quaint as time passes...

I entered this painting as a reception piece (morceau de reception)--again another reference, this time to the long-defunct Academy Francaise des Beaux Arts--upon beginning my tenure as an MFA Student-Teacher at ASU.

Dedicated to a Defunct Detective

A fleeting, five-minute sketch drawn on a whim would later become a timely epitaph...

The Final Words of Lear's Fool

"I'll speak a prophecy ere I go:

When priests are more in word than matter;

When brewers mar their malt with water;

When nobles are their tailor's tutors;

No heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors;

When every case in law is right;

No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;

When slanders do not live in tongues;

Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;

When usurers tell their gold i' the field;

And bawds and whores do churches build;

Then shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion:
The comes the time, who lives to see't,
That going shall be made with feet.
This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live
before his time." [Exit.

~The Fool; King Lear, Act III, Scene II