radiant fracture

It's been at least a year since I painted anything seriously, and more like two.

But artist Brett Manning (brettmannignart)
posts the Faebruary art challenge every February, and I like the prompts.

I am behind, of course, but that's kind of reassuring. At this rate I will have prompts for all of February. Here's prompt #1, Holly King.



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The prompts seem kind of wintry this year.

[ETA: right, I was going to explain why it looks like that.]

I'm always a bit rusty when I approach these prompts because I paint very little when school is in session. I need a certain kind of expansiveness in my mind. Also, a certain kind of exhaustion helps. Maybe they go together.

Anyway, the first painting in a series can be a bit all over the place because of that. This is much less polished than I'd like, but I thought I should post it to get myself back in the habit.

In this case, I was looking at some stickers I had of Kandinsky's art and remembering how much I loved his playful visual language, and thinking it would be nice to make the king's portrait kind of break up into abstraction.

I can't really justify the combination of this style and fairy lore -- it's a strange soup, and not helped by my haphazard execution.

Oh well -- day one!

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These days most Insta artists seem to have moved to Patreon, which makes sense for money and flexibility but renders them much harder to find.

2025 is probably the last year I will participate in the art challenge. I've always loved it, but it happens on Instagram, and even if I weren't trying to work out what to do about the ethical situation, the designers have rendered the platform useless for sharing art.

Cross-posted from radiantfracture on Instagram.

It's January, when the only thing of any use I can do, on a good day, is paint pictures of house finches.





I knew that trying to render the second pose realistically would probably mean sodding up the angles, so I thought-- this has to be in a much looser style, more gestural.

I overworked it a little bit, but I enjoy the result and would like to do more in that style.

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A great thing about any break is having the mental space to paint again.

I have begun a bunch of projects, but this one was time-limited. It is a little American Goldfinch for my uncle, who is in a care home for the first time this Christmas. The goldfinch appears in company with a half-finished Black-Capped Chickadee who is waiting for me to go and buy more black paint.

I don't think I've ever seen a goldfinch in this territory, but we get a great many chickadees.




American Goldfinch (Aginjibagwesi in Anishinaabemowin — thank you, Joe Pitawanakwat)




Black-Capped Chickadee in progress (t̕ᶿət̕ᶿqiyáʔəs in SENĆOŦEN)

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A couple of weeks ago I took down all of the art hanging on string swags from my western wall and washed the surface. And now it's still blank and I have all this art. And I don't know what to do with it.

I was thinking I might try to sell some for just enough to cover postage -- $10, something like that. It's more to have the art go somewhere, rather than just sit in my house. I don't know if anyone would actually want to buy any of it -- drawbacks are that they're all pretty imperfect cuts and weird sizes, and some are quite dusty. :/ Don't store your art tacked to the wall.

Here's a bunch on the coffee table. I see many Instagram Heads (tm).



[ETA: Hi so I accidentally cross-posted this to Facebook and now people are claiming the art and offering me barter, which is so fun.]

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Weird weather. In the morning, a storm in the north, mist in the east, a patch of blue sky overhead, crows roosting in the trees. Today I feel sore, but lifted-too-many-weights sore, not incapacitated-by-needless-hiking-accident sore. After writing I lay down for a while and the storm that had first caught Salt Spring Island at the end of our Zoom writing session today passed over, rough but quick.

cmcmck suggested a Titania to go with the Oberon, and that seemed necessary, but now that she's here I get the sense that this queen wants to do her own thing.

Parts of this are more finished than others, but I have to say I really love this face.





Photo reference is a self portrait by the incredibly gifted coppercosmonaut . Check out their riveting work on Instagram.

On Sunday, I made spider cake after sovay and was not disappointed. I made it with goat's milk yogurt instead of cow milk and cream, and the bread was wonderfully tart and fluffy, with the thick custardy "spider" running through it. That, with maple syrup? Damn.

I'm in the middle of tonight's second batch of ordinary cornbread, because I am out of goat yogurt but not out of the stone soup I make every Sunday during my family calls. That I have a great deal of, frozen, and the cornbread will go nicely with it.

(Though I guess solo stone soup would be... just a stone in hot water. So it's more like whatchagot stew.)

I got three prompts into the Faebruary art challenge, and then I got bogged down on "fairy dance" because the dancers I chose as a reference were wearing masks and no matter what I did I got the faces All Wrong. The bodies had more flow than the last drawing, but the heads, augh.

(Pauses, listens closely) I think there's a... goose.. in the yard. Hang on.

...No goose. Must have flown off.  Early this morning there was something on the roof with a strange pattern of movement and a peculiar yowl and I'm a bit skittish today. I don't think that was a goose.

Anyway, tonight I sat down and painted for another prompt, #faeriesfestivalfrock in order to catch up a little bit and feel more like a competent painter. The reference photo is a Jean Paul Gaultier dress I have had saved for ages because it was so lovely. (I didn't paint the designs in on the wrap, but now I think maybe I should.) So this fairy seems to be off to a festival that involves catwalks and photo shoots. Must be urban fantasy.




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The prompt in this case was Gean-Canach or gancanagh, which I am told is a sexy fairy fella who lures you away from the narrow path of virtue. He's canonically supposed to be smoking a pipe but here he is just smouldering in general.

The full image (about 4.5" x 4.25" IRL)




Just giving face



The reference photo for this was from artist & stylist jonzu , who does all these great gothy and retro photo shoots -- this one was taken by photographer flaminia_fanale . Highly recommend.

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Here's the last doodle for the #januwearyartchallenge2023 -- prompt was "loop," and I'm doing some more critters, or trying to, to have something to show the Paint-in if they look at my Instagram feed.

Probably silly, but anyway.

My not terribly original but somewhat tasty answer to this week's prompt, #box: a box of doughnuts! The contrast on my camera and some slightly mistaken shading choices make this look a little fire damaged, but let's say that just lends a smoky complexity to the sprinkle flavour.




Predictably, I now want doughnuts.

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Reference: a photo by Jae Park, found on the free photo site Unsplash.

Is it a pumpkin? Is it a critter? Whatever it is, it is about 2.5" square and cheers me up.



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