Fun with Bright Colors

Sheer Volume Continued...

Keeping with the Think Less, Paint More theme I've been trying to stick with, I decided to get back to my roots. I have always been a compulsive doodler, never really thinking about the finished product, I would just keep working on my drawing until church ended/ the bell rang / the plane landed/ the professor saw me. In school I didn't so much take notes as I illustrated the lecture. I have missed doodling since I finished school, and recently when I got a song stuck in my head it gave me an idea.  I decided to take this stream of  consciousness  drawing style to the canvas to see how it would look when it wasn't crammed in the margins of notebook paper.

 Lyrics from Paint the Town Beige by Robert Earl Keen

 1st experiment with "Stream of Conscious" painting for Veterans Day

Quote by John F. Kennedy 

Latest Work

"Art is never finished, only abandoned" - Ron Burgundy (maybe Da Vinci?)

Yes I realize I could've cropped this picture but I needed some scale

A few months ago I wanted to try painting a mural. I was inspired by some graffiti murals that I had seen while in downtown San Antonio, and just decided to go for it. I wanted to incorporate aspects used in those graffiti murals, vivid colors and bold lines, into a traditional landscape scene. I found out that painting on a large scale is very different from the smaller canvases I'm used to. Mostly in the sheer amount of materials used, but also in perspective. You have to step back much farther to take in the "whole picture"....and now I have a huge canvas I dont know what to do with

After a month of intermittently fussing with the details I decided to call it done. 

Note to self: Before experimenting with a new concept, start on a smaller scale! 

Speaking of Large Canvases:

I was finally able to see the food truck wrap I designed for Randy Rogers and Les Lawless last Spring. I never thought I would see my work that big but I have to admit it makes you feel pretty good to point it out driving down the highway. 

Stop by the Outlaw Food Truck on Highway 281 near Spring Branch!

"Best food you'll ever eat out of a Winnebago!"

(not an approved slogan)

Sheer volume

Matt Diffee, acclaimed cartoonist for the New Yorker, and a Texan expat, once summed up one of the  biggest problems I have with my "creative" work: "You can't make a great idea happen by working harder". He goes on, "but the good news is... You can't make a great idea happen by working harder. You have to put in your time and go for quantity over quality."

I'm not a perfectionist. I'm far from it. However, I've found that with artwork and being creative in general, I want to "swing for the fences". I'm not a great artist, but I feel that I am capable of great work, and thus I set the bar very high for myself.
Now, everyone wants to hit home runs and no one wants to strikeout, but I found that the fear of  not hitting a home run every time I step up to the plate is paralyzing. Rather than attempt  a challenge and come up short, I balk, and remain only as good as my last good piece of artwork. What Mr. Diffee said resonated with me. I was so focused on creating something great that I was missing  out on creating something at least good...and good is a good place to start to become great. Or as Diffee clarified, "Going for great ideas is not a great idea"

So here is my first step towards fighting that Greatness Paralysis that has kept me from building a portfolio. Behold! From here on out: The Great,  Bad, and the mediocre of Matt Tumlinson.

The painting above is not something that I am proud of but, after a few months of the idea for it bouncing around my head I finally put the damn thing on actual canvas. Now that I have a tangible image to work off of I can see aspects that I want to work on to fit that vision I had in mind. Its not great, I'm not sure its good, but it might lead to something better. Cheers to quantity over quality!