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after thirteen hours of painting I start to get messy and drop things, trip on things and generally get swallowed by chaos. I was never an artist who kept a neat palette or an immaculate work space as it does not allow for chaos (which is for me) is a primary ingredient in the soup of genius. Francis Bacon's studio always looked like a bomb hit it which is too messy for me. If you are working highly realistically it is often to your advantage to work in a highly ordered environment but then again art is not math and an art studio is not a finance office. The pizza man who delivered that pizza you can see was afraid of me and the painting and he seemed to want to run out the room as quickly as possible.
optical illusion----if you stare at my palette on the lower right it appears be floating above the surface of the painting. That is an illusion. Or is it just me who has been painting too many hours...
"don't be afraid of perfection, you will never achieve it"---S. Dali
In order to paint large, one must step away. I like to go up to my bedroom and look down through the window to view my latest piece to make artistic decisions.
Art is sacred just as people's psyche's are sacred. What is fed into our collective mind via media is something to consider and be aware of! Our reality is spoon fed on a daily basis on a mass-level--- what goes in eventually comes out.
Is there salvation in media or has it rendered us impotent and blind to the great genius of human potential and thought? Is there a place for a youtube- Da Vinci? Can art compete with pop-up advertising? Who are our modern God's and are sound bites the new commandments? Attention spans grow shorter and and religious feeling hides beneath the stark light of a plasma screen. Have we amused ourselves to death?
I have been confirmed for filming on monday for a major news network and I am painting away the hours until then. The star of alex streaks ever brighter across the grey-sullen sky of modern and contemporary art and will save us from the scourge of modernism that has rendered art impotent and passionless and soaked in the formaldehyde of ism's. A preserved shark is not art nor is gluing plates to a canvas with epoxy. One must step forward to save humanity from the emperor' and his false clothes and bring art back to place it came from, the heart of man.
sketch 2
Here is another figure to be added to the last supper table. I am not concerned about likeness at this stage but gesture and pose. Monday is the new day for my TV coverage, excited to have the weekend to work on picture .
If anyone want to own something that you will always treasure (aside from my art) you should take a look at this DVD website called The Great Courses. A good friend of mine sent me the Michelangelo DVD and I have been watching it for two weeks. I never knew there was so much information to be had about michelangelo, it is such a great DVD I can't recommend it enough! I am not paid for this, but it is a must own and I plan on buying the leonardo DVD if there is one. I wont buy the DALI DVD because there is nothing they can tell me about Dali that I don't know.
click here for link:
I cannot repeat this enough times---If anyone sent money and was not sent artwork or is not satisfied 100% please contact me. I sent out thousands of piece of art work so you can imagine that I have dealt with many people and it easy to let some things slip past my peripheral vision. I am confident that we did a great job in filling orders and I wish to confirm that as well. Even if someone just wishes to comment or speak about art you can email me.
alexgardega@gmail.com
alex
I recently came across the word taupe in a request for my art and I never really knew what he exact color of taupe was...here is one definition....you learn something everyday you are above ground.link:
as I mentioned there are a lot of challenges in presenting a profile when you only have visual references for a frontal view. One way to work through such issues is to draw incessantly and think with the pencil. It is the journey of a a thousand doodles that begins with a single sketch.
Often I will take a break from a piece and work on another smaller piece just to take a mental breather and refresh the batteries. I made this watercolor today after drawing media heads for many hours. Sometimes it is nice to limit the palette to muted tones.
It is important when one starts a work of art to maintain enthusiasm throughout the process of painting the piece. The beginning stages or formative stages of a painting are usually fairly interesting and exciting as you are often tackling something new in regards to approach or composition or layout. Delacroix (one of my favorite painters) said that anyone can start a painting but it take nerves of steel to finish one. (I often agree with Delacroix.) Da Vinci was notorious for leaving efforts unfinished and moving on to his next interest like a child from toy to toy. I often battle with losing steam in the process of painting a work but I also enjoy the idea of "wrapping up" and finishing a work, knowing you stuck it out until the end.
I am setting up a web cam to show time-lapse images of my Last Supper progress. I am not very technical so it is a work in progress. When I have time I will make some videos of me painting and link them to here.
Here is another "diner" at the Last Media Supper. I am selling all my sketches and studies for this media event so if anyone wants to own a piece of media history you can contact me through email. Imagine owning Da Vinci's last supper sketches! I would personally like to own Dali's studies of his last supper painting but alas I can only make my own last supper. Just as I start to explore the surreal nature of media O.J. jumps into the foreground like a fly at a summer picnic. In my last Supper painting there will be a fly on the bread that will be symbolic of OJ simpson as he affects the national psyche which will be represented by a humble pre-sliced loaf of bread.
Dali was fascinated by DNA or the idea of DNA. AS I have mentioned previously he predicted that (if discovered) DNA would be in the form of a spiral! (He understood the building blocks of the man upstairs.) A man close to Dali has discovered that Dali has his DNA remains on on a feeding tube that was used to feed him after a horrible (suspicious) fire engulfed him in his bedroom when he was in the end of his years. This DNA could be used to clone his genius (Jurassic park style) but I assume it will be used for art authentication purposes instead! There is a new film coming out with Dali played by Pacino (I tried real hard to be the guy to make the art for the film) but to no avail. They will use some Hollywood SFX hack, instead. I can't see Pacino playing Dali, it will not work and the film will be as flat as a phony modernist painting. I could have stepped up to the plate to help because I am a Dalinian scholar but I am only Gardega, not Dali.
Here is the latest update as of three o'clock today.
It seems that Friday is locked in for some TV network coverage about the piece. If you don't have deadlines you never get anything done! The network is interested in an "in progress" shoot--- so It is not a panic situation but alex does have a hell of a hard week ahead of him!
I have roughed out another "media figure" for my last supper. I may have to make adjustments on first figure (or even repaint figure entirely) at some point as I have figured out something I did not foresee! It is a huge challenge to take a well known figure and paint him in profile when you only have frontal information of the persons face. An artist friend laughed at my thought of even attempting this. I will prevail! This new figure is known for his "freedom concerts"...that was my hint....
this photo is little fuzzy but I am too tired to change it...I am painting everything I can before I have to face adding more people. In painting I always eat my dessert before my vegetables which makes me a lazy artist. My teachers used to laugh at me because I would have the messiest pallet. many artists work very neat and anally but I am comfortable with chaos and eventually make order out of it. I could have saved myself lots of stress in my life if I was one of them people who fold their socks when they put them away.
