Night of Rioting Women

Here's another biggie that I painted in tandem with the last piece I posted about.

It's 48 x 48 inches, and I had a lot of fun with the paint on this one.

First couple layers were put on diagonally.

I didn't want to repeat exactly the technique from the large piece, but I wanted to keep them related, so I pushed thick paint around the surface with my big paint brush.

 The color was too much like the other one (I did use much of the same paint at the same time), so I covered it in a black wash and did some major sanding to reveal the texture.

Here I was trying out colors and thought about going with orange.  Nope.

 Here's the progression of the orzos.  A big sweep to some crazy tiny ones.  I used some guide lines made of vinyl to keep myself in check if I started to go astray.

The top third took me a few days to finish, and I largely cut all the orzos by hand.

detail

 The black vinyl is quite shiny and sort of impossible to take a picture of in my working environs, and I just use a little point and shoot camera, so I plan to get some more professional shots taken to do it justice.  I also might sand over the top to matte the surface--still thinking about it.  They're all living things.

Night of Rioting Women, 48 x 48, 2018

A friend saw this and said it reminded him of a dress with a v-neck bodice.  I've been thinking about that and came across a poem (the same from the last post, actually) with this line in it and the pairing makes sense to me.  

"The midnight reeled with laughter of rioting women and men,
Sleek waiters tiptoed after and brimmed the glasses again,
Till the night was blare of ragtime and red with lust and pain.

For this is the brood of the cities, elegant, debonair,
Men with the scars of license and women with shoulders bare--
But I have swung in the saddle and swallowed the prairie air."

From "A Challenge to Youth" by Willard Wattles, 1916