Journey on a Midnight Train

This is yesterday's painting.

Still haven't figured out how to take a decent photo with my camera

This is called 'Journey on a Midnight Train.' Ten points goes to the first person to identify the painfully obvious reference and source material I used for this painting.

It took about 6 or 7 hours, although I took a few breaks in there. Sitting on your ass all day does get a bit tiring. Since I finished my charity chair more than a month ago I've only had time to paint one other weekend, but it didn't go so well.

Speaking of things not going so well, my woman riding on the front of the train and playing guitar turned out pretty androgynous. Which is too bad because chicks who play guitar like a rockstar are hot, and that's what I was going for.

But then, if he/she could be interpreted either way I guess that lets people make up their own story about it. That's kind of what I go for when I paint something. I like to just sort of show one image from a story and let whoever sees it spin their tale about what's going on.

What I learned from this painting is I'll have to practice my female figures. Males aren't a problem for me because I have myself as a pretty standard model, but the way women are drawn is completely different. I don't know if you know this, but they have these strange lumps on the front them that are really hard to make look natural.

Yesterday's painting just started flowing and didn't stop until I was finished. There's a few things I'd like to change about it, such as the train being more centered and showing the engineer's cab, and I'd also like more of 'something' going on in the bottom right corner. There's lots of blank space for something to happen, but I couldn't quite figure out what. I thought that maybe I'd put more clouds in there, but that's something I should have done right off the hop before painting the train. Oh well, what's done is done.

This weekend (time permitting) I think I'll try watercolours and ink. One of my various roommates let me play with his water colour set and fountain pen, and thet were awesome! The different between acrylic paints and watercolour is astounding.

The next painting will be about cocaine. I've had an awesome image in my mind about it for a while, and since that's always good source material it'll probably win some awards.