This step-by-step look into the painting begins on February 22, 2014:

I am in the middle of the most complex self portrait that I have ever attempted.  Personal references and symbols are going into this to capture me right now without using traditional methods of representing a self in a painting.

Laying down the initial sketch was a lengthy process as I wanted to pack in so many things. I started things out with a nod to my love of math… and the Fibonacci sequence found throughout nature.

I was staring at the painting for a few hours after this part was done, desperately trying to figure out a problem. I kept thinking of adding a spider but couldn’t settle on a style and didn’t have a reason for it to be there… I went to sleep, still restless chewing on the idea. I did not mention this to Jeff. I had a dream that I was walking up to him to ask him something, and he was staring at a computer screen watching a slideshow of photos of the universe. I told him to write an idea on a piece of paper, but I couldn’t read his answer. At that moment, I woke up to him screaming in real life…. in his dream, I had opened a bag and a giant spider filled with black smoke came running out. This is a sketch guided by his description, born in our dreams.

As I started in on the details, the process made me second guess using acrylic paint- but I have since decided that it was the best possible choice after things were rolling..

I hit another mental block after working on tiny details for so long, and felt defeated….

I was waiting on my Optomap eye scans to use in the upper half of the painting.  I recently had these scans done as part of a routine exam, and instantly thought of their potential for use in this piece.

The lower right section of the image I could work on without the eye scans, so I let my right hand work on its own self portrait.  Understandably my hand is an important symbol of my creative self.

Today I received the eye scan images,  and they did not disappoint. These represent my reality, everything I have absorbed and seen in my life has been collected here.

 

When the eye flower was reaching completion, a massive wall of intimidation hit me because I had set the level of detail required for finishing the rest of the painting.  Sure, this worked out great! But how was I going to make it all match this now?

Multiple people have questioned the level of detail and how this was achieved- I used this tiny detail brush for much of it, but I also like to cut the bristles on my larger brushes into a tapered point.

The mental blockage reached its zenith around this time, with me never having spent this extended amount of time on any one piece.  The usual feeling of instant accomplishment from doing a two hour drawing or even a painting over two days was now replaced with seemingly endless work ahead and self doubt.

AND DISTRACTIONS! So many shiny things.

Another few small pieces had to be made to save my sanity, this was an idea I wanted to revisit later in more detail.

I finally shared a WIP photo of the entire painting when most of the underpainting had been finished aside from the horn.

I needed to start the hard work of finishing and polishing up all of the areas that were fun to loosely paint in… but grueling to bring to completion.  In the neck of the unicorn I hid this message…

I often find myself
whatever that is
barely contained
scarcely here

I also made sure to include the word “JOY” on the side of Danielle, my veiled chameleon.  She really does have this word on her!

The show that this painting was to be unveiled in was fast approaching- and I needed to stop and create some promotional images for it, which was a nice break!  It was also a reminder that time was running out, and there was much work left to do.

 

Another two small paintings to get some ideas out of my head were the last distractions I allowed myself before the massive art marathon that marked the completion of this piece.

A late stage addition of a final reference were these outstretched roots from leaves of succulent plants trying to grow a whole new being from broken pieces.  I liked this for symbolic reasons aside from the fact that I am obsessed with succulents as a hobby.

In those long final hours of finishing up all of the areas of the painting I had stared at unfinished for so long, life sprang up and surprised me.   This hand that I had become used to seeing in its unfinished state was suddenly shockingly familiar as MY hand.  “she is done”

This was the birth of the cosmic self painting.

Hanging it for the Unicorn Art Show was so exciting, as a few people came up right away and started staring at it so closely- there is a lot to take in.  If you get a chance to go see it, it will be hanging from May 3rd – June 30th 2014 at The Nicollet in Minneapolis!

Now onto the next idea 🙂