The other day I read a news article about “secret things” in famous paintings. One of those “secrets” was the image of the artist in the reflections of a shiny object in the painting. “Wow,” I thought, “I have done that.”
My paintings are based on photos I have taken. I download the photo onto my computer, then place a 2 by 2 inch grid over that image. I paint just one of those squares created by the grid at a time, and so when I am going to paint that square, I zoom in on it on my computer, so I don’t see anything else. I then just try to paint the corresponding square on the canvas (that also has a grid of two inch squares) what I am seeing in that square on my computer screen.
Because I have zoomed in on just one square, I often can’t tell what it is that I am painting. I just paint what I am seeing in the square. Later on, when more squares have been painted, I am often surprised at what it was I was painting. This happened to me the other day, after painting a couple of squares with different shades of blue. I discovered it was some mountain slopes.
The photo above is taken from my painting “Chrome” which shows the chrome vertical strip on the side of the grill of my old 1977 GMC truck. If you use a bit of imagination you can make out my distorted reflection on that strip. (photo above).
The flesh-colored blob in the top is my head, and the blue color below it is the blue shirt I was wearing. The two vertical areas in the middle are my hands, which are holding my black camcorder. The darker blue in the lower section are my jeans. Can you make all that out from the distorted reflection on the side of the truck’s grill?
Below is the whole painting.