UNTITLED (2016) by Michael Whelan, week 35 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.
I grabbed a piece of scrap board I was using as a coaster under my morning coffee mug and challenged myself to whip up something from whatever I found there.
My first thought was to make the circle into a porthole on either a spaceship or a pirate ship or something, but that seemed too obvious. Plus I had Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” playing on my stereo when I started…
Source: michaelwhelan.com
ACCIDENTAL ALIEN LANDSCAPE (2016) by Michael Whelan, week 34 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.
Included is a photo I took of my tabletop while painting DREAMSEEKER, the last piece finished for my show at Tree’s Place. I ended up fiddling for hours with the suggestive shapes in the spilled acrylics. I was too curious to see where it was going to stop myself.
Source: michaelwhelan.com
BOASTY CROW (2016) by Michael Whelan, week 33 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.
A black brush-swipe of acrylic paint turned into a cartoon crow.
Source: michaelwhelan.com
JABBA’S ACCOUNTANT (2016) by Michael Whelan, week 32 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.
This is literally the top sheet on my most recent pad of palette paper. I’ve been using a lot of blues lately!
Just a riff on some paint smears again. Smooshy magenta blobs looked like rhino ears to me, and well…
Source: michaelwhelan.com
TRIPPING ON BOSCH (2016) by Michael Whelan, week 31 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.
From a sheet off one of my palette pads. I use those gray paper palettes a lot as they are a fine surface for mixing acrylics and the gray surface better enables me to judge relative values of colors I’m blending.
The different subjects aren’t meant to tell a story or look connected in any way. They’re just sketches riffing on smudges of mixed paint.
It could be the one on the top right was influenced by seeing JAWS on cable channels virtually all summer long. It’s a perennial summer favorite apparently!
When I swiped a blending brush on the paper it made a shape that said “Land shark!” to me, for some reason. This one is rather Bosch-y, though, having feathery bits and legs and all.
Source: michaelwhelan.com
UNTITLED by Michael Whelan, week 30 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.
Once again, I found myself with a dollop of Raw Umber and a couple of other colors remaining on a palette I had been using; a couple of suggestive smears of paint became a springboard into my imagination. I felt like doing something with an SF feel to it as a departure from the more fantasy-related themes I’ve been doing lately.
Source: michaelwhelan.com
TRUST (2016) by Michael Whelan, week 28 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.
Acrylic - 12" x 16"
The masonite board I had been using became a painting which fits a theme begun with “Leap of Faith” and runs through “Winging it” and other paintings.
The bonus images start with a shot of the board on my drawing table before I started to transform it. I turned it upside down and decided to use the diagonal line as my starting point.
As it developed, I liked how it was turning out and decided to finish it to a level that would allow me to add it to the pieces that will be in my show at the Tree’s Place Gallery, opening August 13th.
Source: michaelwhelan.com
UNTITLED by Michael Whelan, week 26 in his week 26 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.
Recently, I’ve been working on a painting with a lot of greens in it for an upcoming show at Tree’s Place. As is usual for me, some of the paint got on my drawing table, right in a square that I had cut out of the mat board and filled in already. While waiting for a section of my full-sized painting to dry, I fiddled around with the square of color. After some time, this little scene took shape.
Source: michaelwhelan.com
UNTITLED by Michael Whelan, week 25 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS 2016 gallery project.
This one is done in black acrylic gesso on a sheet of palette paper. I must have been thinking of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” when I sketched it, using a brush that still had some pigment on it after coating a piece of illustration board.
Source: michaelwhelan.com
BLINDER by Michael Whelan, week 24 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTED GREMLINS gallery project.
“Blinder” began as a splash of sepia acrylic ink that I turned into a character in one of Steve Cox’s Mutant Hunter books. If you look into the paint, so to speak, you can see drippy marks and spots of sepia paint, some of which I turned into moles or radiation scarring or his left eye.
When I’m applying a textured glaze of acrylic on a panel, I usually put a piece of scrap paper under it to catch any overspill. In this case, the “paper” used was a unique artificial substrate that doesn’t allow water-based media to soak into it. Any fluid paint or ink beads up and makes interesting patterns.
Seeing a suggestive smear on one side of the scrap paper, I cut off the messy part, turned it sideways and realized that it could become the basis for a “portrait” of Blinder. When I came across the scrap later, I gave myself the time to go into it and develop it into a simple monochrome rendering.
Though I had fun with it, I decided that I was getting bored with umber colored sketches. I glazed some colors into the piece after protecting the first layer with a coat of clear acrylic medium.
Source: michaelwhelan.com
New Prints Available
Top
