Working On My Style with The POTC Lady Buccaneer

My time for painting has been next to nil for the last few years. After a recent trip to Indiana where I talked to one of my artsy friends, I realized that although I enjoy photography, I really do miss creating art on a canvas. We talked about how he creates his paintings and the technique he uses. His work is much more fanciful than mine; scale and proportion is much more loose, and his paintings have a real sense of playfulness and movement. On the other hand, my style is much more precise and labored; something that throws me into a tizzy whenever I am about to paint something. I worry about the scale, the proportion; is everything just so? Is that line smooth enough? I realized I really need to put some fun back into my art. As an experiment, I decided to attempt to recreate an iconic (yet hidden) piece of art by Disney animator Marc Davis. This painting can be seen (for those with good eyes!) in the Captain's Bar scene of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland.

This painting has so much fun in it; the smirk on the wench's face; the cherub pouring the wine. Even though some of the proportions of the wench are goofy, this amazing piece of art works.

I began with (of course) a grid on the canvas to help guide me with perspective.



Even with this, I didn't feel it was looking just right, and ended up disregarding it in the end, relieving myself of the burden of having to match the original perfectly.



Once I did that, I was able to feel the spirit of the painting rather than approaching it from a cold technical standpoint.



I found myself more excited about working on this, and (magically) found more time to work on it.



I was pleased with the final result.



I am hoping this will spur me on to create my art more freely, and not get panic attacks whenever I look at a blank canvas.

See more Daveland art on my website.