The Birth of Christ.

Click through to see how this painting was created. From model to gallery.

Here is the work in progress.

Cutting the umbilical cord of Christ

It has been a long process bringing it to this point with much more work to be done, click though to see the steps involved…

The Angel is cutting the umbilical cord of Jesus to bring him into the world.
This explores the relationship between life and death, mortality and the enlightened knowledge of living.

Step #1

crude drawings to illustrate the idea- I’ll add that later, that sketchbook is at home.

part #2 – find a model for the angel. Could have worked from clipart but didn’t want to muck around with light sources and wanted a specific pose.

Hot summer sun and much drapery.

step # 3 . Prepare your surface.

I am going to use a 24″ x 30″ wooden panel that I will gesso and sand several times before it has the desired smoothness.

I skimmed a bit on this step, should have sanded more but when you are eager to get at the painting. Not the end of the world but this will cause the early layers to take on a slight grain.  It’s the inmperfections that give character anyway.

apply many layers of artist grade gesso, sand between layers

step #4 – prepare your drawing the exact size as your surface and transfer your lines over. Avoid using dark colours in the transfer as they will be difficult to deal with later. I’ve used red which should hide after I apply my first red layer of thick oil paint.

transfer your lines

step#5

This is a technique of my own. Try at your own risk, but I have had no problems so far. Using minimal amounts of liquid acrylic I start to block in and shade areas. Laying down the first bits of colour. This colour will be nearly %100 replaced by the end of the painting but it will still show and add quality to the final piece.

adding liquid acrylic

Step#6 – Paint the whole thing red! This one is a tough one to swallow but is the most fun.I chickened out a bit and made the red a bit more transparent then I meant to. Here is when the painting becomes an oil painting and the style used to paint goes from a subtractive method to an additive method which is more fun and less work.

coated in red oil paint

Make sure you let the paint dry completely between layers before adding any more paint!

Step#7 – Paint in the hightlights using white. This is how the painting gets built up.

paint the highlights using white

step#8- paint the whole thing yellow

coated in yellow

oh I forgot to mention, between layers take a razor blade and scrape the surface to remove and lumps, hairs or other impurities that settled during the drying time of the painting. If you don’t do this, those small lumps will pool the paint over the layers and become bigger problems. The way a pearl must bother an oyster.

scrape painting to keep it smooth - carefull

Next step is to paint the whole thing baby blue. It will substract the detail again but not erase the detail, just force it into an old layer of sublety.

One coat of transparent blue

Back to painting in highlights.

Paint paint paint.

Keeping the studio busy.

Marina with the Birth of Christ.

Feedback keeps the painting from getting stale and grows it’s personality.

Exhibition ready.

A press release garners publicity.

A free, open source and incredible program - Blender3d.

Back from the Blender3d conference in Amsterdam. Is there a better excuse to go to Amsterdam?

This image makes a great desktop background. The soil needs a bump map and some more texture but you may not have noticed if I didn’t say.

Graffitti style city

Fatty City

Body Stream

Pots and Plants

TVs, Bodies, Cars and Trees

Cherubs building the city.

Click more to see all 16…

These are painted with gouache on acid free cotton rag paper.

Tangled Trees

Spiralled blooming city.

Sepia City

Unravelling sidewalk, splitting city.

A city woven at the roots.

Blue Towers

Body Flares

Stacked

deep corner

a busy city

More on the way!

The price of gold has gone up over % 500 in the last ten years...

The Chicken Lady

First in a series of characters I’m planning. Chicken Lady!

It’s official. London Ontario. The Arts Project Dec 16 2010

“London’s own under celebrated master artist Christopher Wright paints and tears up common sense in this art treat for Londoners. Taken from the international underground stage and brought back to his home town – London Ontario Canada. Likely for the last time.

The show will feature a timeless collection of paintings that explore life through several themes: public perception and the ego, biases & brainwashing, feminism and discrimination. his hilarious outlook.”

Chris Wright is the Drunk Peacock. Specifics to follow.

http://artsproject.ca/exhibitions/wright2010/wright2010.shtml

The best festival in the city, I call it the Poor Man’s Palooza. Everyone else calls it Sunfest.

Plaid Chris

Here is my first city modeled and ray traced in Blender.

My painting has been suffering lately as I find myself working more and more with 3-d graphics. I’ve always preferred the finished canvas but there is something to be said for letting a ray tracer figure out how the optics of the glass and water should shine. & sitting back and watching it happen or going to sleep and waking to find the final picture rendered. There is a real feeling of satisfaction knowing that your computer is doing something productive while not supervised. “Here computer, work on these renders and I’m going to need those torrents downloaded by morning too.” No thanks.

So my new love is Blender. I had the best time with Sketchup, and she will still be there when I need her but in my look to expand the functionality I came across Blender and it’s great. A free, open source 3d modeling program with ray tracing, animation and a physics engine.  I’ll try to post some splashes I’ve been animating.