Mike Lyon

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

October 13, 2007 By Mike Lyon

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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.

1 2007_10_11_acrylic_linen_60x40.jpg Self Portrait, 2007, 60 x 40 inches, acrylic on stretched linen
2 2007_10_06_underway.jpg Just getting started
2.5 2007_10_10_almost_done.jpg painting nears completion
3 2007_10_18_detail.jpg 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.
4 2007_10_18_light_eye.jpg The only dark values in the painting come from the black underpaining -- nothing but successively more opaque white was used to produce the image.
5 2007_10_18_dark_eye.jpg Up close, it's pretty intense and interesting because of all the stringy white squiggles and circlets from which the image is constructed...
6 2007_10_18_with_self.jpg Mike with Mike in studio

Filed Under: Painting, Video Tagged With: Black Velvet, Canvas, Carbon Black, Elvis, Linen, Painting Acrylic, Portrait Painting, Retro, Self Portrait, Titanium, Transparent, Velvet Paintings, White Paint

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