When I bought all the pieces of wood a few weeks ago I bought one that was really thin.  5.5″x24″ to be exact.  I had many ideas about how to use this space, but eventually each one proved to not be a good fit, I just couldn’t make any compositions work in that frame.

Then it hit me:  I’d been doing a lot of sketches of this figure I originally drew in my sketchbook:

The idea here was some sort of experience of ecstasy, flames of some kind burning up from some of the chakras.  Specifically I was going after the same mood invoked in part by The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, by Bernini, which I’d always loved.  Ironically after sketching everything out and laying down the background on this painting (we’ll get to that in a minute) Sam and I watched Angels & Demons which features that sculpture at one point in the story.

I did several sketches of this figure on the tracing paper; experimenting with different hand gestures, feet placement, adding wings, etc.  Then one day I looked at it from upside down… and I realized that the figure looked like a trapeze artist.  Suddenly I knew exactly what I could do with that troublesome piece of wood.

I started laying down multiple acrylic washes on the raw wood.  The paint seeped into the wood beautifully with a great “hazy” effect that I actually wanted, not wanting the background to have that much detail (in order to give the sense of depth later).  For once, I was actually really pleased where it was going.

This is without the spotlights added…and then with the lights and the paper figuring out just how to position her.

I had the worst time actually getting the girl on there.  For one thing, I realized I’d just sketched out the bones and musculature on my tracing paper, but not the OUTFIT.  I had to go back and do some research… then trace it out again.  I then tried a few different methods of making transfers from the tracing paper to the wood, but nothing worked… so I had to try to freehand it as best as I could.  I think I made her thighs too big though… oh well.

I apologize for the crappy photo quality.  This piece and the octopus piece are actually very hard to take photos of because of their crazy size.  Also, there is a lot of tiny detail.  For instance, you can’t really see it here, but if you look close in person there is actually light from the spotlights reflected off of the trapeze strings (not sure what they’re called).

The actual painting of this one was very quick.  Probably a total of 6-8 hours, but there was much consternation between stages… I didn’t want to screw it up somewhere along the way like I did with the “snood” painting last month.

Here is a photo of the two paintings side by side leaning against the wall for a better idea of the size…