Michael R. Barrick

More colour.

I have a tendency to talk more about the "what" over the "why" with my painting. It's not without critical content. Like why acrylics over oils? One reason is they are an inherently post-war, industrial, material-science creation.
#acrylic #acrylicpainting #painting

This morning's little bit of progress before I need to herd the cats for a vet visit. #acrylic #acrylicpainting #painting

This is something I haven't tried before: doing the hair with a grisaille and a glaze rather than alla prima and impasto. 10 minutes of painting after hours of fretting—the other part of the process no one talks about. #acrylic #acrylicpainting #painting #process

I think I am happy enough with the grisaille on the face to move on to other parts of this painting. And yes, it's not technically a grisaille because it is actually phthalocyanine blue instead of a black, but there is a reason for that. #painting #acrylicpainting #acrylic

I may be influenced by styles and processes that are hundreds and even thousands of years old but I'm mostly working with materials that are only decades old, some only a few years old and my process is wrapped up in technology that's only come to be in my lifetime.

The likeness is starting to come together. Starting. I'm so dreadfully slow. These in-progress pictures are part of the process now. I often notice things that I wasn't seeing until I sit back and pick up the phone.
#acrylic #painting #acrylicpainting

The time lapse on this one is going to suck. The idea was that the armature wouldn't move relative to the painting. The problem is that the cheap camera I got for pandemic meetings 5 years ago refuses to stay put. I put some tape on it today to hold it, but I may just need a better one

It took me while to settle on what I was going to try this time. #painting #acrylicpainting

Vancouver, British Columbia. Мій дідусь був із Закарпаття.

The only way to make an English-language social media site that isn't a dumpster fire is to block users from the United States

And now the time lapse. I don't actually know how long these take until I make these. Turns out there was about nine hours of actual painting in this one, which happened across two months. #timelapse #painting #acrylicpainting #artwork #boriskarloff

The professional photo with proper colour and controlled reflections, with a reminder that it's painted on literal garbage.

Now it's varnished and there won't be any more changes. This started with seeing a live production of "Arsenic and Old Lace"

It's alive!
Varnish, decent not-cellphone picture, and time-lapse to coming soon.

This pulls a few things together. Feels absurd gilding a grocery bag, even if it is only really cheap brass.

Wish I had more time today. There's always tomorrow, until there isn't.

Tweaking a few shadows.

The answer I chose to the question in my last update was "clothes."

Clothes, gilding, eyes—which first?

Flirting with mimesis, trying not to overstep. Critical content is on the other side of the dancefloor, wondering WTF is wrong with me

Looking a little more human. It'll be a few more layers like this before he'll quite have to glow I'm going for. And of course I am completely improvising the colour.

I'm reasonably happy with it at this point. As with some previous ones, that the reference photo was taken with multiple light sources is messing with my head a bit.

Today's stabs. In other news, Jeebus H. Farnsworth the music on CBC FM is garbage this morning.

Getting medieval with pigments and materials that haven't even been around for a whole century. I was going down this path up until about 20 years ago when I got detoured. These garbage-paper exercises feel like progress. Maybe by the time I retire I'll be able to pull-off what I imagined in my 20s.

This has come up at work where we are currently displaying a scent-based work with scented canvases. Turns out I am the only one that has heard the term "canvas sniffer" to refer to an art gallery patron that gets in close to artwork to look at fine details. Is it not common or just archaic?

There is really just a 10 to 20 minute window in the morning where I have the time and the right headspace to poke at these so they take forever, but those few moments are better than nothing.

Yup. With each one of these scrap paper exercises I try to stretch a little farther, and this one is definitely a stretch. So much "wrong" with it at this point, but I've learnt not everything needs to be tickety-boo from the get-go, or even at all.

For the record: men, especially ones with dramatic features, are much harder to paint.

The first little bit of blocking in.