The Golem & The Grizzly

This project just started with the idea to place strings of crepe tape randomly to mask of black lines off and see what developed.

What developed was the following, and possibly an Aespoesque fable to eventually go with it.

I primed the canvas with a couple of coats of black and went to placing the tape. I had a rough idea of where stuff was gonna go, mainly the trapezoid at the bottom, which I knew I wanted as a metallic base. Stepping back I could make out a faint eye, nose and ear of a bear. So I knew I had to go with brown.

Then came the layers of gesso to add depth to the black lines and the under painting. After bronzing the base, I added more masking to break up the space and that is when the “golem” suddenly appeared.

Here would be WIP shots of filling in the fur and adding the blue and stuff, but the camera seemed to want to eat those pics >: /

The moment of truth… pulling back the bandages. I admit I wasn’t all that impressed with this right about now and wasn’t sure what would come of the surgery – a soap opera miracle recovery? Or Jack Nicholson laughing delusionally in the back alleys of Gotham?

Not bad… not bad at all if I do say so myself. At least for a 4th attempt at acrylics.

The crepe tape, while working pretty well, had let some gesso pool underneath leaving blobs of white to deal with. This may have been the longest bit of the project, touching up the white edges to all the newly created panels. Luckily I had gotten the fine liner brush that I could’ve really used on my last painting.

Now photographing the final image, that’s a whole’nother story. So, we’ll leave it at that.