Drawing imaginary creatures is where my art began, and I've gone back to them over the years for inspiration. In this post, I first talk about two of my earliest creatures in the painting Chasing Temptation. Then in Jain? and The Old Soft Shoe two of my dancing creatures are the stars.
I also use my contextural style to reinterpret characters from famous paintings into my own imaginary creatures. To end this post, I present two of my reinterpretations - one from a famous European painting and another from an iconic Asian painting.
Chasing Temptation
Chasing Temptation includes two of my early imaginary creature ink drawings.
Transformed using my contextural style, the first creature becomes a pink-skinned maiden with golden hair wearing a beautiful dress,
and the second creature becomes an exotically colored temptor.
The maiden is following the flying temptor along a path out of the forest below,
towards the alluring unknown of the castle-topped mountains.
The sky is aflame in the distance, and storm clouds are gathering. Who knows what the future holds for this maiden as she chases temptation!
Dancing Creatures
In our travels, I was impressed by the Jain temples in India and the terraced rice paddies in Bali. The dancer originally seen in Haunted Temple Dancer gets to experience both in the painting Jain?
The Old Soft Shoe focuses on one of my creatures that reminds me of a tap dancer.
This was the first painting where I reversed my usual contextural technique that paints darker patterns on top of a lighter background base layer. In this painting, I painted lighter patterns on top of darker base layers. The lightest color is on the outline of the creature which makes it shine brightly against the dark background.
Reinterpreted Creatures as Homage
Not all of my creatures are based on my own drawings. Some of them are inspired by other paintings.
My Tribute to Gericault's Mounted Officer was inspired by the famous Gericault painting below.
My contextural interpretation of the painting changes the feeling from the realistic fury of battle into a tribute to the majesty of the officer and his mount.
When traveling in Southeast Asia, you find varied paintings depicting the chapter of the epic Ramayana story in which Princess Sita is taken by a demon. I used the wood block painting below as the inspiration for my interpretation of The Abduction of Princess Sita.
Wood block paintings use only limited colors and texture. My contextural style uses many more colors and creates textures that help make the painting more vivid and impactful.
Look for more to come in my next post when I tell all about my samurai creature paintings.