EFT and the Curse of the Mummy

Illustration Friday: Wrapped

"Mummy" acrylic on 9x12 canvas

When I was a kid I had a mummy phobia as a result of seeing some unwrapped mummies in a museum. Although it faded when I grew up, there has always been a little bit of it left, so I decided to use Emotional Freedom Techniques to see if I could completely resolve it. EFT is a combination of psychology and acupressure. Very thorough instructions are available as a free download from their website. Very interesting process; I've used it on several other issues and I'm very impressed with it.

Anyways I tapped through several rounds of EFT to work on dissolving this phobia. To test it, I googled Mummies and spent an hour or two finding out all about them from little baby mummies to bog people to unravelled pharaohs. Didn't feel a thing! And afterwards forgot about it. Didn't dream about it that night. Hey, this worked pretty good.

Then I started this painting. I purposely gave it a face more in line with mummy portraits than a real mummy because my genre is whimsy, not horror. Anyways I like the irony of a pretty face painted on the top of the whole bundle. Once I finished the painting, I started to scan it, and my face began breaking out with a bright red rash. So once more, I did several rounds of EFT tapping and took the rash down to where my face looked normal again. Couldn't help but wonder if this was some sort of coincidental body memory involved with the mummy phobia, so I factored that into my EFT tapping rounds. Turned out I remembered how embarrassed I was to be afraid of mummies. Mortified, if you'll pardon the pun. I guess the embarrassment must be gone because otherwise I wouldn't be telling the world all about this.

About the painting: it is on a very fine grained all media canvas. I glued some regular canvas on it; you can see where it's got some collage pieces glued on--the Mummy itself and the staff it is holding plus a few others. I've got one more painting underway where I glued a cutout piece canvas over it, and then no more of that. Too hard to paint it, because I tend to change my mind in the course of the painting.

I did an underpainting with violet oxide and glazed over it with pthalo turquoise, cadmium red light, and yellow ocher. When I wanted to add white I used zinc white, because it is translucent and makes a good glaze white. I'm pretty satisfied with the color harmony of this painting. And I might even do more Mummy themed paintings.

Reflections

"Reflections" 11x14 acrylic on canvas panel.
I'm in this painting group on Fridays--affectionately known as "Hell's Easels"-- and run by Austin artist Eve Larson. The group features a clothed model in a long pose. This time our model brought in her vanity table from home and posed with it. She even had some perfume bottles to complete the picture (I ended up not painting the bottles, but they were really nice bottles).
From where I was standing, I couldn't see our model's reflection in the mirror; it was blank. I wanted to include a reflection of her, but do something different, so I put it looking back from the wrong direction. To balance the composition, I added a landscape with a river, and the river also has the model's profile.

I was very pleased with the colors from this painting. It's a limited palette: cadmium red light, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue, black, and white. I used a lot of dry brush and the painting has a similar look to a pastel painting.

To photograph this painting, I used a flat bed scanner. I scanned the painting in 2 halves, and put the 2 halves together in photoshop. I had to adjust the colors on the 2 halves, using levels, to match them perfectly. There was still a seam, so I blended it using the blur tool, and textured over it to match the canvas texture. Even though this may seem like a lot of work, scanning a painting gives great results, so I'm happy with it.

Completed Sphinx

Finally got this Sphinx painting done! (scroll down and you can see the original study for it in watercolor). Acrylic, 11x14 on canvas. The Sphinx is wearing a little sundial which indicates her Riddle: "What goes about on 4 legs in the morning, on 2 legs at noon, and on 3 legs in the evening?" She is holding the Answer in her hands. "Sphinx" is 11x14 acrylic on canvas.