Wandering days at home

I've neglected the blog and the drawing lately because of house-guests and a general end-of-winter malaise... but here I am again, back at it.

This bird painting was done, destroyed, dead, and resurrected about a week ago (making it old news) but I'm posting it anyway because some of my reasons for keeping this blog are showing process and archiving progress. 

(This was my first painting on different paper. It was frustrating because I am an old dog.)

Ok. So we'll go backwards through time with this one. Here's how it looks currently, hanging on my wall:

Here it is right after I took a shit-fit and ripped it to pieces because I felt I'd over-worked it, ruined it. This was disappointing because I'd spent so long fiddling with it. I'm actually glad I ripped it up because I think it looks cooler taped back together...

This is the stage when the bird looked the best. I'm not really sure why I messed with it... 

Pre-colour:

Here's the source material, a book of antique bird prints. This is a humming bird with a crazy tail.

This is the reference for the look of the banner. The text on the banner comes from another page in this book. It reads, "Ora, Lege, Lege, Lege, Relege, Labora, Et Invenies". 

This translates roughly as, "Pray, Read, Read, Read, Reread, Work... and you will Find." 

This book was really interesting. I'm not an alchemist but I enjoy reading about the history of it and how it helped grow/shape modern chemistry/science. I like the characters and the imagery a lot. I enjoy how dense and complicated and contradictory it all is. I went to a talk at the library by a lady who did her masters on Esoteric Imagery. I don't think the experts even know what to think about it all. Here's a CRAZY image that sums it up. What is going on here?! 

This is another image from the book. It is about the alchemical stage of Putrefaction. 

I based the painting below on the image above ("As above, so below"... hahaha... little alchemy joke for you there!) 

Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at with these artistic-stumblings is some sort of airing out of myself. Getting the stinky-stanky gloom out of me and preparing the vessel the some other new experience.

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