I finished the haunted house painting some days ago, but am just now posting it!
Below is an additional digital painting, which I completed today. I call it "Bicycling", and it's done in an Expressionist style, inspired by Paul Klee. It doesn't have a very wide range of values (darks are noticeably missing) but I liked the image being more of a celebration of color. Every time I tried adding darker shapes or lines, I felt like it was a "dead" area on the canvas. So it ended as you see it here. :)
Progress on the haunted house painting! Sorry for the delay, I've been doing more reading than painting lately. I've been studying the creative process, including reading a neat book called "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci", by Michael J. Gelb, and also "Cracking Creativity" by Michael Michalko. Plus, going back to the usual stuff such as "Bruce Lee - Artist of Life" and Paul Davies' "The Mind of God". It does a person good to set before his eyes the inspiration of others!
My favorite point from Gelb's book was that da Vinci's greatest asset was his ability to tolerate the enigma. Da Vinci believed that all things are connected in some way, and that all forms and colors that we see in the larger world are also embedded in the smallest discernible speck. He thus would fearlessly combine dissimilar objects in his mind, in order to hunt down a similarity, or to find a way to combine the objects, to reveal a new idea. For example, he created the idea of a spiral staircase by contemplating conch shells that he found on the beach. Da Vinci urged that we stay steadfast in the creative process, saying, "Constancy may be symbolized by the Phoenix which, knowing that by nature it must be resuscitated, has the constancy to endure the burning flames which consume it, and then it rises anew." I would recommend Gelb's book to anyone who likes a good and thoughtful read.
Anyway, in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci, who was notorious for never finishing anything, here's the haunted house painting again, still not finished! :)
