Music To Paint Mirror Balls By

This all started when I woke up with these sentences running through my mind: Idle hands are the playground of the Devil. Do you wanna get funky with me? Do you wanna?

Obviously my brain had been taken over in a Disco invasion and I had to paint about it. However, having played Peter Brown's Get Funky With Me about twenty times since then, I've grown tired of it. How about instead of getting funky with Peter, we calm the fuck down and just dance with him?



Well hey, this song reminds me of when I was under-aged and getting into discos in NYC left and right. Seriously-- high schooling 5 days a week and disco-ing 3 days a week and working-- WORKING!!!! at a supermarket-- waaaaaay before I turned 18 much less 21. Reminds me of something. . .

It's Thursday and we don't want to do anything too strenuous, there is school the next day after all. A sit down with a pitcher at The Back Fence while listening to some live guitar music is a fine way to start the weekend. Yeah, when I was 16 the weekend started on Thursday.



The lighting at The Back Fence is so reminiscent of something. . ..

Back in school on Friday no worse for wear because we are immortal. We sang this song at 78 rpms instead of 45 thereby rendering Thelma totally squirrelish.

"That's no moon!"

After school we end up here. Where's here? Why our favorite dance club where everybody knows our names, the beats are familiar and we all can meet at the bathroom to discuss the pickings out on the floor.

This is beginning to be a thing.

Surely this song was an oldie by the time we did The Freak out on the floor but I still remember hearing porn star Andrea True backing up our dance moves with her vocals.

Is it a disco ball or a mirror ball?

Isn't it nice that we made it home in time to get ready to go out? Saturday was the real party night. What is waiting for us out there, girls?



 

So dark and yet so light.

Are we fakers or are we here to snap our fingers until we put holes in our thumbs?!!

THAT'S RIGHT!

And so the sun comes up and it is now Sunday, the day when we slowly walk the walk of shame in the glaring early morning light with our high heels swinging from our fingers because our feet can't take it anymore.



And we take one final shot at our disco ball, sleep and store up energy for the next weekend ready to store up memories to post about years later.

I Regret Being Cheap and Caution

Cinnamon Cooney, of the fantastic lip tutorial, recently put up a how to on painting an old copper background which I loved. Here, you'll love it too.



I decided to experiment with it and since I wasn't sure how my experiment was going to work out, I used my very cheap school grade paint and acrylic paper.

 Step One: Putting on burnt umber and phthalo blue with a big brush.

The elementary school burnt umber wasn't bad but the phthalo blue was just. . . wrong. And opaque. Who ever heard of opaque phthalo anything? Who ever heard of the word 'phthalo' to begin with? The people who do not want to say 'phthalocyanine', that's who.

Step Two: Draw outline of pitcher with charcoal pencil and paint around it.

I'd like to point out how well the drawing turned out considering I can't draw for shit as you can see by how many times I had to draw the belly of the pitcher before I got it right. Seriously, like three or four tries just to get an outline of a pitcher! Why am I here? Why do I even pretend I can art when I can't draw a simple pitcher?

Step Three: Get over myself and add layers.

With a sea sponge I layered on not cheap phthalo green and yellow oxide. Only because there was no phthalo green with the grade school paint and the two yellows were like lemon and sunshine yellows. You know, for painting rainbow unicorns.

 Step Four: Use more yellow oxide and gold to layer on more, especially in the highlighted parts, then make a thin wash of white to highlight some more.

 The End.

Note also how funky the lighting is in my painting room. I face a north-facing window where I can look into my neighbor's hallway window if they ever do anything exciting. Which they don't. I got a pretty harsh 100 watt overhead LED bulb which is a giant improvement over the dim, dumb 40 watt fluorescent that was there until a few days ago. And last, but not least, a goose-necked light clamped to the table that I use to shine on stuff I can't see because I'm blind.

The upper left hand corner of this painting did not change from one photo to the next. Yet the time of day, the source(s) of light-- even the angle of the camera changed the colors a lot. I'd like to take it outside to photograph it in natural light but there is a snowpocolyps abrewing and I'm not going out there.

No matter which light it is in, I like the way it turned out but since I painted it on paper instead of canvas I cannot hang it in my home, I can only tape it to my craft room wall like a lovesick teenager.

Our Wide Eyed Little Primate Cousins

I am in the middle of painting a tarsier. I am painting a tasier because I love painting eyes and I hate painting fur. I figure if I paint a tarsier I get to practice the hated fur and reward myself with eyes. In case you have no idea what I am talking about, here's a tarsier:

The smallest totally carnivorous primate in existence. He looks like a much more adorable version of his ghetto cousin the Aye Aye.



O.K. Michele. What kinda of  stereotyping, racist bullshit are you talking about? Ghetto cousin? Really?

Some of you will say that the above photo still does not make it right. Just because the Aye Aye isn't as adorable as the tasier doesn't make using that descriptor acceptable. Some of you may be right. But what if I tell you that the Aye Aye's most distinguishing feature is her fuck-you-finger? Her long, flexible, muscular index finger that she uses to lure prey?

If that's not ghetto, then nothing is.

But enough of our ugly Aye Aye cousins and on to our more adorable cousins named by Dr. Seuss-- the Lorises. Or is that Lorisi? Lorisus? However it is pluralized there are two of them. One is Slender and the other is Slow.

Slender

Slow

What's the difference? Well, one is skinny with bad-assed dance moves and the other is retarded, apparently. Oh and look at that Slow guy's face. It must be painted! The Primate Naming Committee should not have insulted him by calling him Slow. They should have insulted him by calling him Sad.

And finally, one more shot of the tarsier because I must:

Ah, what the hell-- one last one.

Why yes, I do have an Etsy: Fallen Face Studio

Will Kemp's Cherry and Carl's Glass Gems

More of an Art School style YouTuber (he, in fact, has an on-line art school you can enroll in) Will Kemp taught me how to layer with acrylics. You could say Will Kemp's cherry busted my art bone. You could say that but don't. It's stupid. Anyway, here's the first part of Will Kemp's cherry.



Will Kemp's cherry is so complex that it comes in a four part series that contains five parts. I'm not even joking. This series of lessons was one of the best YouTube lesson I ever watched. There's no way I would have been able to tackle Carl's Glass Gem Corn without it.

"Carl's Glass Gem Corn? What the hell is that?" I can pretend someone asks so I may continue typing. Carl's Glass Gem Corn is a painting of corn cultivated by Carl named Glass Gem. The corn is called Glass Gem. Carl is the cultivator. The painting is called Carl's Glass Gem Corn.

Background.

Under-painting layer.

About three layers in.

I'd say there are about 4 more layers in this one.

Another 3 layers plus shine.

This is not how the painting actually looks. All these pictures were taken inside my far too gloomy painting room. It can't be called a studio, it's too dark. Here's a picture of the painting taken outside-- on a cloudy day, no less.

This here one is more how the painting looks in real life.


Why yes, I do have an Etsy! Fallen Face Studio

The Artist All Up In There!

Just like any celebrity, artists want to be face forward too. "Look at me 500 years ago painting these dope paintings!" they'd say if they used 1990s slang. Only most of these were commissioned works and the people paying did not give them money to put their ugly mugs in the picture. But as we know, artists are crafty mofos.


Check out Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding.

The first thing we notice besides wow! what a beautiful painting, is that 15th century Italians waited for the very last minute to get married. Plus they had dog-bone shoes for their Shih Tzu. What you probably don't notice is good ole Jan hanging out with the family. Lemme show him to you:

This is how bad-assed (or desperate to be in the picture, you decide) he was. In the mirror in the background of the painting is the back of his subjects and the front of him (plus someone else), Because circles within circles, dude.




If the painting wasn't commissioned the artist could be much bolder. Johannes Vermeer was exactly that in The Procuress.

You know, it could be a commission for all I know. Don't think many 17th century art patrons request paintings of hoes in whorehouses. Alas, Mr. Vermeer is not the tit-grabber. He's the alcohol drinker. A detail of this painting is usually what you see if someone is showing you a picture of Vermeer. Although the drink and tit grabbing are usually blocked out.




Another century passes and painters are getting bolder. Here Francisco de Goya as Spain's Court Painter, inserts himself in this for sure court paining: The Family of the Infante Don Luis de Borbón

I think he used a bit of misdirect razzle-dazzle. "No, Senor Borbon. I did not insert myself into your family portrait! As you can easily see, I was painting the portrait when some other painter painted me painting you. I mean, come on, most of you were looking straight at him!"




In modern times the artist doesn't even pretend to be painting anything else but himself. Right Norman?

And finally we have a painting of a painter painting a painting of a painting painting himself.

I did, like, 4 days of research on this here painting and I think (not sure as I don't speak German) that this is an artist and writer named Armin Peter Faust. Any of you fives of people who read this can correct me if I'm wrong.









Of course I have an Etsy. Fallen Face Studio

More Internet Teacher Love

Are you a beginner acrylic painter but don't know your acetone from your elbow? Hie thee quickly to YouTube and hashtag yourself some BigArtQuest! There is some real learning going on over at Cinnamon Cooney's channel, The Art Sherpa. And Cinnamon is a work of art herself. I just adore her Ombre lips and matching hair.  Plus, you can tell that just off-camera, she's a little bit salty. I like that imagined trait in a person.

The Rocky Horror tutorial I link to below is not part of The Art Sherpa's Big Art Quest. The Big Art Quest includes things like How to Make Custom Color Charts and The Miracle of Acrylic Mediums and Easy Skin Tones. These videos are actual lessons with definitions and homework and stuff-- that you don't have to do because it's YouTube! and not an expensive class you paid hundreds of dollars for. So blow it off, who cares?





I very recently watch this video (note Cinnamon's purple Ombre action) and was inspired to paint my own lips. Not my own lips that are on my face. No-- my own painting of lips not done according to this tutorial. Except for how to paint the teeth. I did suffer badly from "Chiclet teeth". The Sherpa fixed that.


Here's how I did it.

 Picked a very, very pinkish peach and painted the whole canvas. Drew in the fang lips with a charcoal pencil (Don't be messy like me when you do this). First coat of teeth is grey, inside of mouth is black and the shadow is burnt umber.

First coat of magenta, oxide red and titanium white.

Second coat. And we're blending and blending and blending. . . .

Highlight them teeth! No Chiclets here.

 

More layers. More blending. More layers. More blending. Now shine them lips up good and glossy!

Ya know, that pretty much is what Cinnamon did in her video. Except my lips are Ombre and I did a lot more layers.

Ombre. A word that I have used maybe 3 times in my whole life and now I have a page on the internet, which means forever, repeating it over and over.


Why yes, I do have an Etsy! Pinkslinkie's Fallen Face Studio. 

In The Beginning There was Clive, The Mad Welshman.

I don't remember how I stumbled across Clive of Clive5Art but it was very early on in my art journey. I don't know why he it the spot so well. I liked his style of painting and I liked how he rambled on and I liked his accent and how he seemed like such a proper English gentleman who occasionally wore a thumb ring. Over the years his studio has grown and his production values have gotten better and he tries so very hard not to ramble and keep his videos short. I dunno, I love the ramblings. Here he is introducing himself:






Just as Angela Anderson showed me that I could paint pictures that weren't crap, Clive showed me I can paint pictures that I could be proud of. Not that I wasn't proud of some of my other stuff.  You know, stuff that didn't look like crap always made me happy. But look at this study of a cat's eye I painted following one of his tutorials.

 I could paint like this? Wow Clive, thanks for showing me I could.




Of course I have an Etsy!  Pinkslink's Fallen Face Studio

The Hours Continue to Need Filling

Back in January of 2015 my face fell. Did the hospital thing and the rehab thing and, after about two months, my job told me that they did not want my wobbly, drooly, funny talking ass around no more. Also, jewelry making became almost impossible. Now what was I going to do?

After week of sitting at home wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself now that all I could do was walk into walls and drop food out of my mouth, I decided I wanted to paint a picture. Not to paint a picture, mind you, but as a stencil of sorts for a mosaic. I got some acrylic paint from my craft room and the lid of a cigar box and painted a flower-eyed view of the sky. Look at this piece of shit:

Boy, you could tell I hadn't painted a damn thing since elementary school. But I still had paint and I still had cigar box lids and I still had 24 hours to fill-- minus the sleepy time, of course. So I pressed on. I painted about 3 very, very terrible paintings before realizing that there were teachers out there, willing to teach me for free. My very first painting teacher was Angela Anderson and she taught me how to paint trees with sponges.



I do not have a picture of the painting I did using this tutorial (my fourth ever) because someone liked it and I gave it to them. Yes, I--me!-- painted something nice enough for someone else to want. Well now. This meant I had to buy supplies!

The thing is, ever since I picked up that brush 2 and a little bit years ago I have not put it down. Every day I paint a little. Every day I learn more with teachers who just give away painting lessons! They just give them away. For free. I am forever grateful.



Of course I have an Etsy! Pinkslink's Fallen Face Studio.