Hell City / Wet Paint Project 2015
Another Hell City has come and gone. I am super grateful to be able to attend as a part of the Wet Paint Project group.
I definitely look forward to the time painting, time spent with friends, being inspired and learning new things. I didn’t have any definite plans this year for anything that I wanted to paint for sure. So I brought a few empty canvases and one small painting that I had started previously.
I thought he looked a little bit like he was escaping a fire (too calmly) so I opted to tone down the background. Also I didn’t like the positioning of the further arm so I tried another position for that. Would like to go back into it again, but I think some of the problems have been corrected.
The AC Moore near the shop in Greece is closing, so they have a lot of things on sale. When I was in there poking around I had found these black canvases and decided to give them a go. Over all I like the idea of the dark starting point – but these particular ones were very poorly stretched. I wouldn’t buy these again – but will want to play more with starting on the dark.
Overall I am pretty happy with this one so far – would like to go back into it and even up the background and tweak some more things – but overall it’s going where I would like it to.
Saturday I started another one. Some things that I really like about it and some things that I couldn’t get comfortable with all day.
I quit working early on Saturday so I could attend a Wacom seminar that Guy Aitchison was teaching. Was a useful experience and I picked up some tips on shortcuts and some other ways to use photoshop that I knew how to do, but hadn’t tried in that particular application. It’s always nice to pick up new things.
The seminar ran longer than I thought it was going to – so by the time I got finished up I went to eat with Paul and decided not to return the paint room that night.
When I got back to the room and had some time to look at it, I realized I didn’t like the day’s painting nearly as much as the original sketch. I brought it into Procreate on the iPad and trying moving the head and body around a little bit and liked the effect better. Gave me something to shoot for. 
Sunday morning we did a little bit more exploring in downtown Columbus. There are a lot of things that I really like about Columbus and it made me understand why people like to live in the city. I don’t think I will be moving any time soon, but I think next time we come out to Clolumbus I will try to stay a little longer.
I had thought about doing a painting on Sunday of something else from Alice in Wonderland. There were pansies growing all over the place and I thought it would be nice to use them for reference for the flowers that talk to Alice. As is turns out I didn’t, but it’s another idea to keep on the back burner and get back to. 
Instead I started out Sunday by wiping a good chunk of what I had done on Saturday off of the canvas.
I’m happier with it, but it still doesn’t have the character that I am looking for in the face. I will keep playing with it – the overall positioning works for me now so the rest is detail stuff.
Hell City is one of if not the premier convention in the Country. There were amazing tattoos being made all weekend in every style imaginable from some of the world’s best tattoo artists. I saw some old friends and met some new ones. Sold some art work to some wonderful people. Learned some new things. Got reminded of some things I needed to be reminded of. Got invited to Venice. Found some inspiration. Started a couple of paintings that have good solid potential.
I am so honored to be able to be a part of this weekend and look forward to future events. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the this weekend being awesome.
Just TeeJay's Blog 
Your paintings of animals are very sweet and magical.
Thank you Shelley 🙂