Three Tails

8 x 8 mixed media on print sealed to board

So this was the second run at this particular painting.

The first was looking great, coming out a lot like the Black Jackalope and then I tried to fix a particular bit,  overworked the paper, and tore it off in a great soggy strip, an act which makes the art gods weep or point and laugh, depending on their particular bent. (I have never quite figured out the art gods—Our Lady of Photoshop is the only one I have any notion of, but I assume there’s a great many of them somewhere…probably Our Lady of Grackles is also involved, but maybe that’s just me.)

After this grim experience, I started over again—the sketch appealed to me too much—and then I got this far and the one art voice that actually knows what it’s taking about rose up from the back of my skull and said “Stop. Now.” So I did, immediately, because if I have learned anything about art, it is that a surprisingly large percentage of it is knowing when to stop screwing with something.

Anyway, 8 x 8, watercolor pencil and clear gesso on top of print on hot-press watercolor paper sealed to board.*  Original is for sale or will go to con, prints are available!

 

*I am always amazed how medium grows organically into a complicated morass of stuff that gets harder and harder to explain to people…

3 thoughts on “Three Tails

  1. Dawn says:

    I love your work Ursula, but this one? Imho it kind of proves even an amazing artist can have an off day. It’s still cute but it is a little unfortunate in my opinion.

    I hope you don’t mind a little critical feedback. It looks to me like it’s head is unformed and unstructured, it’s ears are cartoonish in a way the rest isn’t, the anatomy of the body is twisted in a way that isn’t really working, and I think the tails are misplaced. Not to mention I think the colors are muddy and either overworked or under-worked.

    If someone showed me this and said it was your work, I’d assume that it was really old work or I’d be asking if they were pulling my leg.

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