Monday, August 15, 2011

ALL DREAMS update

No pictures today, sorry...I opted to exclude the regular photo or scan because the piece is very close to being finished and posting it now would negate the grand reveal.

At any rate, I'm kind of excited about the way it's coming out. It hasn't been a typical piece for me...rather, it's been very exploratory, which I think is a celebration of coming back to doing art for myself rather than for business. The color scheme is nothing like what I'm used to and I have been forcibly limiting myself to the supplies I find at random rather than waiting and seeking out the supplies I feel like I "need."

The colors are very muted, very indiscernible at times. I used dried up glitter glue that I mixed with a little measure of paste and water and re-stuck (it gave it this amazing chunky texture that was incredibly organic, contrasting with the extremely inorganic feel of the material...awesome!). It was my first experiment with masking, which I only had a toothpick to use to apply. All in all, I was stretching my boundaries and learning to laugh at myself. And, surprisingly enough, the piece was not ruined! It just looks like a beautiful, all-over-the-place, colorful sketch gone awry.

I have decided to finish it up with a few oils (something else I haven't touched in a long time, acrylics being my preference) and I'll hopefully have something to grandly reveal to you in the next couple of days.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

OLDER PIECES

"Untitled"
by Dani Selvaggio
2006

private collection


Like anything else, art requires training. This is a type of eye warm up where you put your pencil to the paper at one point and don't lift it up until you've completed sketching the contour of what you're looking at...oh, and you can't look at the paper either.


"Bottom of the Canyon"
by Dani Selvaggio
2001
for sale

My first attempt at "abstract." The texture experimentation came out well, but I was still really too confined in developing my own style at the time.







Tuesday, August 9, 2011

"Dreams" In Progress







Some examples of the masking and watercolor-over-the-masking so far. How this will actually work on the cheap-o paper I'm using, I really, really don't know...but that's okay!

The Art is in the Process (otherwise known as, "I destroyed my painting.")

I have this problem when it comes to making art, where I focus on the end result and how to get there. This goes against everything I believe art should be, which is completely process-driven, with the end result being a secondary happenstance. Art should always be in progress, always in flux.

With one of the current pieces I'm working on, "All Dreams Come to Pass," I slapped myself on the wrist before I made any stupid plot notes and decided to just run with it, knowing full-well that this would probably result in the complete destruction of my painting.

It has, so far, and I kind of love it anyway. The ink is bleeding all over the place, the colors really didn't turn out how I envisioned, I have no idea what I'm doing with the masking paste and everything is a complete mess. But the more it got screwed up, the more fun I was having and the less serious I took my expectations for myself. I don't recommend this approach for every aspect of life, but for yesterday it suited the moment and was really very liberating.

I love my painting. It's like a My Little Pony farted all over my paper.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

A Million Billion Things

"All Dreams Come to Pass"
by Dani Selvaggio
2011



in progress


Oh, man...sorry for the radio silence, folks.

There was a while there that I was locked out of this account, for whatever reason. This morning I was finally able to gain access again.

I hope to updating this blog a lot more frequently now. I have so many new projects in the works. Some I'm being paid to do (rocks my socks) and some I'm just doing because it's art.

Here's a little teaser of something I'm working on. You can totally see my sketchy notes if you look close enough. I'm hoping that it will be one that I can introduce in a local show sooner or later. The main part of the design was taken from a thumbnail version of a logo I was hired to do - I maintain copyright for all logo design until a final logo is approved and purchased, so when they chose a different version of the logo for their business, I jumped on this one. It kinda just popped off the page for me (and I'm super glad they didn't use it).

The words on the bottom part of the project are from a poem I wrote and have yet to publish. The unfortunate thing is, in the form the poem takes in this image, it would defeat the purpose of the piece to publish the poem now. Why? Because in the soon-to-be-painting, the poem is scrambled. In the actual poem, it's...er...not.

Ahhhh, art...I feel like I'm breathing again.