Self Portrait, painting in acrylic on linen, 60×40 inches

Today I completed something a little bit ‘different’… Looking back to the velvet paintings displayed at the 5 and dime when I was a kid — maybe they’re still up there today — hula girls, Elvis in all his glory, typical 60′s kitch in stiff opaque color practically glowing out of that black-black velvet…

Well, I didn’t so far as to actually paint this on black velvet (which would have been pretty nice in a retro-leisure-suit sort of way — but I’m just not that ‘cool’ I suppose).  So this is painted on stretched linen in transparent titanium white acrylic on a carbon black ground.  I first painted the entire canvas black, then applied many layers of white paint in order to build whiter and whiter lines out of previously painted white lines — so each successive overpainting made that area whiter and more opaque.

Self Portrait, 2007, 60 x 40 inches, acrylic on stretched linen

Just getting started

painting nears completion

I first painted the entire canvas black, then applied many layers of white paint in order to build whiter and whiter lines out of previously painted white lines -- so each successive overpainting made that area whiter and more opaque.

The only dark values in the painting come from the black underpaining -- nothing but successively more opaque white was used to produce the image.

Up close, it's pretty intense and interesting because of all the stringy white squiggles and circlets from which the image is constructed...

Mike with Mike in studio