Hope those reading this are well, riding it out at home and staying safe. It's not "Twelve Monkeys" it's "The Thing", and even one small particle of it is enough to infect a man. Stay Home.
I'm waiting it out with my parents in Syracuse, both in their 80s and we are quarantined against outside contact. Period. I had returned two weeks ago for a quick overnight while in the process of relocating from Utica back to Syracuse and just happened to have brought the last of my Space Bling and most of my art supplies. I will be here until the order to remain in place has been lifted and on day three decided that my work is essential & must continue. It is my duty as a citizen to stay home, make art, inspire others to do the same, and work up a show from our collective results when we can come into each others orbits again. Far Out.
The idea all along has been to make art from or with the spaceman stuff and I'd been itching to push the project into painting (or at least making stuff other than digital pix) and picked out a Lido Toys "Futureman" figure, a blank 18x24 canvas board, and my box of water soluble NeoColor2 caran d'ache pastel crayons. For lack of any other way to "reproduce" the figure I traced its outline into the board about sixty times using various colors and applied a wash in spots to work the pastel as a watercolor. Then went in with acrylics to just get used to painting again for real.
Current state after twelve days. I like working with text and can't draw a straight line if my life were to depend on it. Needs structure but it's more painting than I'd done in at least a year. Consider it uncorking the bottle, and parts of it were collaborated on by mom, a formidable artist in her own right.
While working it I thought I might vary the form my tracing the outline of a recast Mexican made MPC Spaceman clone from the early 1990s. Then decided you know ... I've always wanted to try painting one of these. Not as a toy but as a painted object. All I have in the house right now are either basic spray type paints or acrylics which are not the right materials for painting on plastic.
So what.
Artist Steve Nyland only uses acrylic paints & mediums by Golden Artist Colors,
watercolor crayons by NeoColor II, and brushes by Princeton.
After several unfortunate starts I found that Golden Artist Colors Iridescent Copper Light (Fine) adheres to the plastic the figure is cast in better than most. Iridescent Silver (Fine) as well, and so I used them as a base to mix different shades of foil flight suits. The Flowerglobe is from a 2016 project and served as a departure point for another painting series underfoot above (and the last image on the post below) that we'll look at some other time.
The Foil Suit Crew in progress, and eventually when I get them just right they will need to be coated with something like a clear coat or polyurethane sealant. Even then the acrylics underneath would be prone to being scraped or even peeling off when handled. So these aren't meant as customized toys, and concocting a method to minimize handling has been on my mind. Some sort of housing they could exist within, even if just a plastic bag simulating a vintage space toy.
An impulse I've had all along is to construct artworks into which the spacemen themselves would be fitted in a way that would permit the owner/viewer to remove him. I was always the knucklehead kid who wrecked their spaceships trying to pluck the astronauts out & figure most everyone would feel the same way. So for starters I conjured up an image from my youth which I've pursued as a painting subject in the past.
When we were kids there were three or four of my Uncle Bill's science fiction magazines from the 1950s in a hutch. We were allowed to look at them but not to take them back to our rooms. The one which fascinated me the most was what I recall as a highly elaborate illustration of an Art Deco spaceman standing on the steps of a crumbling pyramid in the midst of a dense teeming jungle. He was holding a ray gun and looking back over one shoulder. Off to one side his space ship lay in a broken heap, and the words MAROONED ON THE JUNGLE PLANET were included in some manner. Someday I hope to find it again.
Such illustration work is beyond my skill set as an artist, but after searching in vain for the artwork for a couple years decided to heck with this, let's just make my own.
Above a version from 2009 as I was teaching myself to paint again after six years of inactivity. The new form is on another 18x24 canvas board and has the Foil Suit Crew figure which best suggests what I remember the figure in the original artwork as doing; Standing there looking lost.
Idea for the piece is to build up a shadowbox structure for the painting to be the backdrop for then use what I know as plasticine and a construction material called Great Stuff to sculpt a few inches of terrain which match up to the painted imagery. Part of which will be a nook where one can place the spaceman facing in whatever direction the viewer chooses. I'm partial to the "over the shoulder" view shown first but if so you'll miss out on the nice detailing on the astronaut.
The Foil Suit Crew's state as of this posting, up on the Ogle Shelf in my Syracuse workspace.
Matching belt and shoes, like Herb Tarlek from WKRP.
Not sure about the gloves. The black I prefer doesn't adhere well to whatever the crap that plastic is supposed to be.
Teshnishan in Quinacridone Red.
The best, hands down.
Lookin' sharp. Worked hard for that green.
Another idea I've wanted to pursue was "Pop Art" packaging, and decided a way to have the figures presented could be to simulate a giant carded set. First thing needed is a decorated card with a super cheesy space artwork on it.
There's a start.
Click here to open video in a new window, which demonstrates the properties of the light interference acrylics I'm using for that extra spacey edge.
The text is markup and the image taken with both the figures & moonscape in an earlier state, but yeah I'd like to see this including the price tag (with Daryl Hall/Robert Fripp reference), cellophane wrapper, and dust accumulated from six years in a remainders bin. Have them held in place via twist ties & do a whole series. I wish I'd though to do it in a vertical format so there's other variations to try ... I also know where to get a box of the figures for a dollar each. And we have plenty of wood panels, canvas boards, paint, and time.
Stay Home!
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