Artwork ... 'Gunslinger'

'Gunslinger'

This simple painting continues the trend of a dark, single figure against a lighter background which I started with my "Dee" painting and continued to lesser success with "Bandito." I like this one better than "Bandito" but still not as much as "Dee." I'll have to work on that. I might take another stab at something along these lines.

As is obvious, here I went with a much more silhouetted form and not the blurry, scratched figure of the earlier paintings. This was intentional, but also an experiment. And while the title might think I am referring to the Stephen King character, I don't feel the guy in my painting is anyone nearly as noble as the fallen Roland Deschain. No, I think of the character in this image as more dark, possibly robotic, akin to the android played by Yul Brynner in the film Westworld.

Another thing I enjoyed about working on the piece was the play with the bright colors of the yellows and burnt sienna with a dash of darker shades here and there, as contrasted to the plainness of the all black cowboy figure. I find it interesting the number of faults the paint can actually conceal, but at the same time can make others stand out.

Again, I'm no great artist and don't plan to be, but I'm enjoying myself with my simple paintings, and soon I'll be revealing five new e-book covers, each containing simple works painted by me but also some fancy work I did in Photoshop (a medium I'm much more experienced with, though I don't consider myself a genius with Photoshop). These e-books will be part of a serial tale I'm working on, the first part already complete and bits of the others started.

I'd also like to add I'm finding of interest the differences between painting and writing, or at least the differences I am discovering. Painting has a feel, a flow to it that I find lacking in writing, not that that's good or bad, just the way things are. The paint brush feels almost like a living thing in my hand, telling its stories but not necessarily mine. I control the tool, but it doesn't necessarily do what I want or how I want. Perhaps that is a sign of my being an amateur, but I'm also finding it somewhat liberating.