Chris Simonite's Cubo-Weirdism Blog! A Blog about Chris Simonite's Art by Chris Simonite. Who the Hell else?

So once again I did one of my Sorta Master Copies™ (not really trademarked). It's something that I should do more. One of them even appeared in an exhibition in New York. Well, a virtual exhibition, but still! There are all kinds of reasons to do a Sorta Master Copy. The number one reason being: I learn something every time I do one. I've been able to put a lot of the the things I've learned, especially from the John Singer Sargent copies, into practice. It's taught me how to block in colour (which creates a definite ‘ugly stage'), and that forces me to use more paint. In turn, that results in my paintings looking richer. It's also fun to see the painting go from the ‘ugly stage' to the (hopefully not) ugly stage! [...]

In this week's post on this here Cubo-Weirdism Blog here, I want to to write about the end of the 'Elizabethan' era and the beginning of the–hmmm–what do they call it? The Charlesian era? The Chuckian era? I wanted to do this because I am Canadian and therefore I live in a constitutional Monarchy where the head of state is–and it feels weird to say this–the King! And that would be the very same King as the one in the United Kingdom. For all of my life and likely for most of the lives of the people reading this, there has been a queen. And that has always just seemed normal, at least sort of. Let's just say I have mixed feelings about the British Monarchy. They are absolutely a symbol of European Colonialism. And that is hugely problematic for reasons I won't go into because I feel that my reader(s) are likely well informed on the topic. [...]

I know, I know, I've written about the Bechdel test a few times before. But it came up in my brain again a few weeks ago, so I thought I should address it once more. If you didn't read any of the previous posts on the topic and have never heard of the Bechdel test, I should probably give you the definition. According to Wikipedia, the Bechdel test is: "…a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man." Now, obviously my paintings don't talk to each other. So technically, my work cannot pass or fail the Bechdel test as stated. However, the majority of my work over the last few years has consisted of portraits of figures from pop culture, and very often characters from fiction. And there are a lot more male characters than female ones. Part of that has to do with the fact that works of fiction in our culture so often centre around men. And, not surprisingly most of the paintings I've done of characters from fiction have been men. I've had to consciously decide to paint more female characters in order to balance that out at least a little. Plus, even in fiction that doesn't pass the Bechdel test, some of the best characters are women! [...]

I've mentioned before on this here Cubo-Weirdist blog here that about one in ten of my paintings just doesn't turn out. At least that was the case before this year. This year I've a had a really good run where virtually all of my paintings have worked out pretty well. I I will admit that I have a couple that I started weeks ago that are not up to snuff, but that I believe I can 'rescue' at some point in the near future. But a couple of weeks ago I decided to do a portrait of the great Elvis Costello. I've been a fan of his for, well, let's just a say a while. Maybe you could even say a long while. Anyhoo, I know I've written about my process and even shown how it works on social media, but in case you're a new follower I'll give you a little background. I start these paintings with a digital drawing on Procreate on my iPad. It usually starts with a caricature of the subject and then I move features around until I have something Cubo-Weirdist that I think might make a good painting. Admittedly, the drawings are often not great, so it's a fun challenge to turn them into a good painting. And as I said above, I believe I accomplish this most of the time. [...]