Gayle Wheatley, digital
Just finished a new illustration for Pepperdine University’s production of Songfest—a musical extravaganza. This year’s theme is History in the Making, so I drew a Mayan-inspired temple with hand-drawn type that is being hoisted up in place—literally depicting history in the making! The illustration was sketched in pencil, inked over, then colored digitally in Photoshop with overlay layers of paper textures to create an old world vibe.
Watercolor & Ink on Paper
(Colored Pencils on Paper)
Wow, this is a weekend of holidays! It’s Chinese New Year this Sunday!!! Yay for the year of the Tiger! It’s also Valentine’s Day, then President’s Day, then Mardi Gras…and the Winter Olympics just kicked off! What a blast of fun! So, have a Happy Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year, President’s Day and Mardi Gras everyone!
So, in a burst of inspiration, (and in a complete departure from my previous two concepts!) I finally came up with this finalized painting for the Beautiful Grim breast cancer charity art auction that harkens back to my bubble girl paintings: explorations of otherworldly environments where symbolic elements such as oxygen and water compete for sustenance.
The deadline is TODAY and I finally got the whole thing finished and turned in. Whew! It was getting down to the last minute there!
Adorned with a melting crown of textured coral that threatens to drip and tragically melt everything along with it, stands my “Beautiful Grim,” a remarkably strong and beautiful woman who has learned to breathe underwater against all odds in order to survive. Wearing a glass explorer’s bubble, her face is defiantly immersed in an oceanic microcosm full of fish.
Just realized this is the first OIL PAINTING that I’ve completed in 2010, as well as the first oil on canvas I’ve painted in about 8 months! (which is quite shocking for me as I’ve been paining in oils obsessively through the last decade and beyond.) Ever since my trip to Iceland 8 months ago, I have been experimenting with painting primarily in watercolors. Hadn’t realized it had been so long since I’d painted in oil!
This painting deals more with the internal self, and the body’s symbolic mysteries and organics under the skin…
I’m a participating artist in the upcoming Beautiful Grim charity art show that will be held in San Francisco this spring to benefit cancer. I’ll need to turn in a digital image of my final painting in just 3 weeks, so I am currently visually brainstorming ideas. This watercolor represents one of my first ideas: a brilliant spark of warmth and light in the midst of a canopy of towering walls that encircle everything. I’m not sure if I’ll continue with this theme, but will probably be doing some more watercolor studies over the next week before beginning on the final art.
