Post #693262 by Tiki Shark Art on Thu, Sep 12, 2013 2:55 AM

aloha tiki tribe!

This was tonight's sunset. Nice red VOG-tinged, as the fire ball sank over the pacific rim...
And, (seg-way) speaking of "Pacific Rim", some one asked me a question I''d never been asked before .
"Do I do anything to "warm-up" before I make art, or start painting."

Hmmm, that's a good question.

Sometimes I'm revved up if my "Low-Brow-Art Muse" is around, and I don't need a warm up.

BUT, if he's not, I gotta' get the "art-juices" flowing... sometimes I sketch. But, that can also just eat up all your Art-Juice.
So, I look to warm up on something a little more simple, that has guidelines to follow so you don't have to think about it too much.
Something that brings back my childhood joy of making art.

It also helps shut off my "monkey-brain".

MONKEY-BRAIN - That means all the day-to-day jabbering & worries about non-important (in the big picture Art Way).... unimportant things.
UNIMPORTANT THINGS: Oh, like paying the rent, or paying the bills, and time lines, and dead lines...
...all that has to be tuned way down.
I need little to NO MONKEY BRAIN JABBERING.

...so I can hear my "Low-Brow-Art Muse"... because he usually mutters in a quiet, rum slurred, low, smoky lounge, kinda' voice.

That doesn't mean I don't have on music.
I LOVE listening to things while I work.
Music: I have special mixes, like a "Tiki/exotica-Mix" and a " Rock-a-Billy Brian Setzer Mix) and a "Heavy Metal Mix" and a "Ambient-zone out mix" all depending on the mood I'm seeking.
I have a big collection of CDs, cause I went through a time when for years I was buying sound tracks to movies.
Like, I have every John Carpenter sound track. I love his low, thumping beats- such as "Escape From New York" & "The Fog" ..like that.

I also love listening to audio Books. I love reading, but I don't have time for that any more... sad.

Anyways... But, back to the warm up... the other thing that quiets my brain & gets my hands going - remembering how to hold a brush, and mix colors, and slap on paint...
I paint old toys or figures like monsters and robots.
When I was a kid I loved to build and paint monster models.

AS A MATTER OF FACT: A lot of how I first learned how to paint comes from me doing that as a kid.
-first learning how to hold a brush, and how to mix colors.

So, the WARM UP is...
... sometimes I grab an old toy (or maybe a new one - I have some long-long-time-friends who know my strange taste in "weird old things", and they surf the net, or thrift ships, and every blue moon they will send me a little treasure.
They know I will dig. They send it in for a trade for an art print or a sketch they saw me doing on line and they want.. and like that.

That's why I have a shelf of universal movie monsters above my art table, and boxes of dinosaurs and things in my garage,
all waiting one day for a bigger art-studio so they can be displayed.
They also come in handy every once in a while as models to draw from.

I hear Mark Ryden is big on this too, so I don't feel so weird letting people know I ..yes ...I have a bunch of toys.

Sometimes, I hunt for things myself. I have a few old resin figures I got in Thailand from a street vendor in the Night Market. One figure is of "Sun; the Monkey-god".
The Monkey-god : That I STILL don't think I'm skilled enough to paint properly yet. But, he sits on the shelf... waiting. Poor old Son has been waiting for more than a decade!

Right now, however, I'm going through my Godzilla kick... again, ...or still, I guess.

That is how I got some figures from Pacific Rim.
And Of course, new toys these days have TONS of little sculpted details. Perfect to paint on.
I don't actually finish a whole lot of them, they are kind of NEVER finished... but I work on them.

My one REALLY finished is a Creature from the Black Lagoon. Many many green scales on him.

Anywhos... the recent warm up has been Knifehead from "Pacific Rim".

He's got blue and purple and green. Colors I love putting together.
Sometimes I figure out cool color combos for paintings that way too.

Yeah, my studio looks like a ten year old's room. But one of my best 'learn how to paint' books is "The Fantasy Art Techniques of Tim Hildbrandt" - Great Book, Excellent BOOK! ...and he's got a life time of toys, dinosaurs, dragons, and stuff in boxes in his studio... many end up in his paintings in various ways.

It all ways helps to see how light really looks reflecting off a wing, or a tail or a claw, or something a human model just can't be...

Brad's Imaginary Low-Brow-Art Muse Sez:
"Great. Give away all your tricks!
Oh well, guess it's good to give back to the "universe".
So, by-the-way, what has all that warming up done for ya?"

Oh yeah, here's me finishing up the tropical plants. Getting the sunset creeping down the pavement...

More Laters!
Big Aloha!

[ Edited by: Tiki Shark Art 2013-09-12 15:30 ]