I painted a self-portrait in a Shrek filter. Because why not?
Also, why are there so many Shrek filters?
I think I only completed about 2 paintings last year, which might be a personal low, and this one is easily one of my favorite pieces that I’ve ever done. It’s just really funny to me! As far as self-portraits go, this is the biggest departure so far in my series. I went from blue to green somewhere along the way and viewed through a filter. What is this one saying about where I am in life?
Well, in my art life things continue to be slow but I don’t even care anymore. It is what it fuckin is. And honestly, from where I used to be, that’s actually a great thing. I don’t feel shackled to any limiting mindsets anymore and when I do paint it’s fun again. The “fun” and “funny” is what I tend to seek out now. It used to be so much deeper than that, but now it’s more of an attitude of “Fuck it.” I have so many projects that I want to start or return to, but I’ll get to them when I get to them. There’s so much I’m juggling and absorbing in life at this point, that any time I can be creative is such a treat but I’m not in turmoil if I can’t do it as much as I would like. That’s been a freeing feeling for me. A win is a win.
Side note: What the hell is going on around us right now? What is this world and everything that we’re seeing around us? As a collective, we seem to be accepting that we’re watching the collapse of the world. So ok, cool. Fuck it. Here’s a painting of me as Shrek.
In moving away from deep-seated emotions as the source of inspiration of my work, I seem to be leaning into the absurd. That’s what this life feels like right now, observing the absurdity of life and the events that are making headlines in it. Because to stop and ruminate on the possibilities of what it all means and how we’ll be affected in the long-run is mentally and spiritually crippling. It doesn’t feel real. Even the superficial, yet entertaining, distractions in toying around with alternative versions of ourselves through filters, photo manipulation, and AI aren’t real. Fake portraits seem to be the new portraiture. So much so, that its legitimacy is an ongoing debate online. Is this evolution or devolution?
I don’t know the answer to that yet but I want to explore it further. If part of being an artist is reflecting the state of the culture at any given time, then I think I owe it to myself to try to share my perspective. I think this Shrek piece along with the meme paintings are the beginning of that statement.
I'm not going to front on here, I was very nervous about this one.I usually only work with the human figure, and occasionally flowers, so when I was asked to paint a friend's beloved pet I tightened up. A pet portrait isn't something that people take lightly! Just like a person, you have to be able to capture the essence and personality when depicting an animal. And not just any "animal," a pet. This is someone's family member. You can't let them down! At the same time, I didn't want to let my inexperience and apprehension deter me from a new challenge and opportunity. Plus it's pretty flattering to be asked to produce a piece of artwork for someone to have. So of course, I accepted.I think my main concern with it was the drawing aspect of the piece. I don't spend time drawing animals at all, so I really didn't know where to start and I was afraid that whatever I did wouldn't look too much like a dog - much less a GOOD one. I was given a few photo references to work from so that was super helpful. Since I've also met the subject, Sheela, I was familiar with her temperament so that helped me when deciding colors and posing to try to give the viewer a feeling of who Sheela is. Here's a little bit of how this piece progressed:
Once I was able to sketch something that looked a lot like Sheela, I felt pretty good. I just need a really good start, because the rest of the painting process is nothing but adjustments as you go and that doesn't bother me too much.
So at this point there's still a lot of decision-making to be done. You don't want the whites to be too white, but muddiness must also be avoided. I still had a lot of terrain to cover on the rest of the head, because there no light/dark values to establish shape and lighting.
