32-Oprah2
©2010 Craig Ashby
Mixed media on masonite.
10″ x 7″

Second in the Oprah Winfrey set. You know the paradigm. Second means single color top layer. I chose a rich indigo for this image. With the overall orange tinge of the bottom layers, it’s lovely.

Okay, so a moment of back peddling. It’s not my favorite of the Oprahs. But in no way does it fail. It’s some of the best work in this entire series. Even if it’s not my favorite.

I do love the transparency of the indigo. It allows the bottom layers the opportunity to shine. And they really shine. This is some of my best destruction work. The look of that light whitish layer beneath the hand on the left is beautiful.

The darkness in her face adds drama and implies the kind of magic you would use to align a solar system. The planetary rainbow and the blue and red in her third-eye follow that drama nicely.

A friend at work, Cat, asked tonight how long each of these take. I explained that the first layer takes a few days. Each cut layer took a day or two, including the selective sanding. And then a few days to do the top layer. And then the sanding of that top layer would take a few more days. Then the final coat. So anywhere from 10 to 16 days, depending. That was when the hours at work were starting to taper to nil, so I worked at least 8 hours a day on each.

Also I loved that Cat thought these pieces were funny, and she got the J-Lol joke. Laugh out loud, indeed! Shout out to the magnificent Cat!