Memorial Day Weekend

It's been about a week since I've had any real productive time in the studio. Not sure if I just needed a break or what the deal has been, but getting to the studio has been difficult this past week. I finally found my way down there yesterday morning for a hour and played around with these four triangle panels. 

I took some photos over the weekend so hopefully I can dig into those to find some inspiration for paintings to come.

monday

Sorry for the delay in posting, things have been crazy. I have been working on a video project, so there hasn't been much spray paint in the studio lately. The Ford sketchbook is full, so below are some pics of the next book. I am thinking about binding a second book and working in two simultaneously, maybe letting one actually carry a single theme and / or narrative . . .

 bound and ready for the cover.

Here is the front of the book in all of its glory. I find the vertical stripes to be slimming. 

 The backside of the book. 

This weekend my dad and I built a door for the 'under-stair storage' room. This is the inside, you might notice that it is the old garage door rotated and reoriented, then added onto a bit. I wanted to preserve the history of the door and the old 'paint wall' but not make it too obtrusive. 

Here is the exterior of the door, so you will see this from the garage. This has three quarters of an inch of solid  foam insulation inside of it, so it should hopefully hold the heat in the room for the water lines. I think it will look pretty sweet once it is hung.  

Here is the start of a new painting as well, It i about 3 x 4. It is one of the abandoned student paintings from this last semester. Thank you care-free graduate!

Work: 5/19-5/22

Playing with how the new panels could be worked into a vertical configuration.

Possible format other than right-angled arrangements.

Woodblock prints. In order to get the print to produce I had to stand on top of the block and rock back and forth to press the ink onto the panel. 

Cutting

Adding alternate panel formats other than the 2x2 and 2x4 formats has been something I've wanted to work into the mix for awhile now. Rather than building out new panels to meet this goal existing panels are being ran through the saw and then new furring strips are added to to patch the new side.

Here's a jig for cutting a 2x2 diagonally to form 2 triangle panels. I needed some way of holding the square securely in place while it passed through the saw, this is what I came up with. Then square spring clamps are used to secure the panel to the angle guide. The right vertical strip runs against the fence. The cut happens about 2 inches past the edge of jig.

To make minor corrections to angle this bolt can be adjusted.

While it is rare for a Dolak contraption to work, this one did just fine.

There is a lot to explore with this new development, it should really start to add some needed complexity to some of the configurations. Quilting with wood and paint.

Tuesday Evening above the garage

I don't know if I posted this, or if you saw this over on the other blog, but I wanted to show it to you so we can discuss this when we talk soon. This ultimately is an exploration in the idea of the object being image and displaying it in a more complete form. This would eventually (will) be sliced up and turned into navigation for a website (bogzilla?) --- similarly to the Ruddy Duck piece, but vertical slicing.

Some recent pages working with some bird imagery . . . part of the 'fight or flight' series

Work: 5/13-5/5

Further oil explorations with the bananas:

Other progress in acrylic:

Work: 5/10

Removed a corner panel from one of the larger 72"x72 arrangements and worked on it individually before clamping it back into position and working it back into the composition.

The acrylic plexi-glass transfer painting experiment that was executed using a portrait a few weeks ago (here) has a lot of potential, most likely for a completely different body of work than what I am working on now. However, the idea of transferring paint from the palette directly onto the panel surfaces has crept into some of the mark making on the panels. The images below were an experiment on applying paint to one panel then transferring it to the next and then repeating the process using the second panel as the application panel.

While the transfer experiment dried time was spent looking a different combination possibilities :

Preferably it would be great if some of the solutions could be single or two panel combinations that were smaller than most of the current arrangements. Below is a two panel 24"x48" possibility. You can see some of the palette transfer marks on the left side of the piece.

beginning of summer

here is the white painting a few days ago, then below is what happened yesterday.  

 after working the stencil with spray paint I have been working an ebony varnish into the surface. 

here is a spread out of the sketchbook, there is a bunch more over on the boggs-studio blog

I'm digging the new background. Good work!

Work 5/6 - 5/8