The Nerdrum Affair and New Works

I am still on the hunting and trapping kick with my paintings.  Something about a bearded man off to kill some cuddly animals just seems appealing to me.  Maybe I wasn't held enough as a child.   This one of Armen is a bit more whimsical in nature.  He is more engaged with the viewer than some other works and has the man's version of a Mona Lisa smile.  I am uncertain of the background or color scheme at this point, but I'll work this out in the color studies.  I am still considering putting him in a landscape, but that's just one of several possibilities at this point.  (Keep in mind this drawing is just the study for painting and still needs a bit of work)

I tried to document my drawing in progress, but sometimes I work more organically, so its hard to break things into separate stages.  In addition, I have noticed Kate is way better at describing and documenting her works.  I'm the pretty one. 

Here is another still life "Vanitas" I whipped up.  Didn't document any stages, sorry.

Well, it's been way too long since I received any entertaining hatemail (I got some hilarious hatemail from some kid's dad in Ottawa), so I thought I would address the Nerdrum issue.  I am not talking about him because I dislike him, I am talking about him because he was one of my favorite artists for the past 15 years and I feel let down.  The story goes as follows, Odd Nerdrum didn't report his taxes.  That's it, that's the end of the story.  Now he has to go to Norwegian prison, which is like a super fun summer camp for adults and actually has recess time.   Now I know what all the Nerdrumites are saying; "He set the money aside to replace paintings that have suspect materials."  And?  He should have paid taxes on that money before setting it aside, even if his intentions were in fact innocent.  Ignorance of the law does not nullify the law.  Or, "he is the greatest artist ever and is Norway's gift to the universe."  I am not arguing against that; his art is exceptional.  However, Sandusky was a great football coach, and he just got life.  Bottom line is, I consider myself a pretty good artist as well, and I still had to go to jail when I dropped a bunch of ecstasy and got in a fight with a group of 3rd graders (which I lost unfortunately).  The thing I don't understand is why he is even worried about his ridiculously harsh sentence.  Since France didn't extradite Roman Polanski for molesting children; they certainly won''t extradite Nerdrum for some back taxes owed.  So really, the whole thing doesn't even matter anyway.   In fact, why are you even wasting time reading this?

......bring on the snippy comments.