On Thursday nights I head over to Sinistral, my favorite brewery in Historic Manassas to do some live painting. Thursdays they host something they call “Hop Jam“, basically an open mic night. They generally get a good crowd, the music is wonderful (there’s always at least one new musician who steps on stage and just blows everyone away) and it’s just a laid back, friendly atmosphere. I enjoy setting up my easel, syncing my artistic groove with the music, painting and chatting with everyone .

Normally, I’ll show up with a blank canvas and start painting lines until I see something taking shape. Last night I showed up with a plan. I was to paint a flying eyeball.

A lot of my art has eyeballs. Try as I may to not put eyeballs in my art I just can’t resist the urge and, boom, there it is, a hot dog with one big eyeball, staring into your soul. Anyway, I’ve always been a big fan of Rick Griffin and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, both of whom had famed flying eyeball pieces and I’ve always wanted to do my own version. So shortly before I went to Sinistral, I saw something about a flying eyeball contest at Gnarly Magazine and found my prompt.

I brought a stretched 30″ x 30″ canvas and started painting in acrylic. My medium of choice is oil, but lately I’ll do an underpainting in acrylic and go over it in oils. I do this because I’m a slob and careless. Oils stay wet for a long time, acrylics are generally dry when I’m done with my painting session. When I’m moving a wet oil painting there is no chance that I wont get paint on everything within 20 feet of me.

I quickly painted an orb with wings in burnt sienna, yellow ochre and white. Immediately I had two folks ask me I was painting the golden snitch. BTW, I love hearing how people interpret my work. When I added the mouth and iris, the snitch image started to fade.

So this is the result of three hours of painting. I expect to put put another 15 hours into this before I’m done. I’ll share updates. Keep posted.