Coral Black Hole

In a nightmare I dreamt of a coral black hole. You know the black holes in space where matter is uncontrollably drawn in by gravity to an unknown place, to a place of no return. Not even light can escape a black hole. Except my black hole was coral. This is a first attempt at painting what I saw in my dream. It doesn't look anything like I want it to, but I have two more canvas the same size to try again. A person has to start somewhere, don't they?

What I did get right is the color. That's just the color of coral I wanted. I mixed red, yellow, brown, and white to get the tone and hue I wanted. I guess I did learn something in my first class.


Look at the ant mound photos I took a few weeks ago which I found on my camera today, now that's a black hole, but one which goes somewhere, to the underground home of a colony of ants. And the ants come and go as they please. The mound gives me another idea of how to paint, dots of paint like the tiny grains of sand, I could paint little dots on the surface of the canvas, like dots of clay slip. So much to explore and learn.

It looks almost like the crater of a volcano or what a crater in the earth might look like if a meteor hit it. There's a meteor crater in the desert of Arizona much like this shape, but no black hole in the center.


Gary got me some gesso and some willow charcoal at the local big box store. Was supposed to be vine charcoal, but this is probably similar. Supposedly you can draw on your canvas with the charcoal and it won't leave a mark in the acrylic paint. I like to draw freehand, but I may need this for geometric patterns I might use.


Not sure if this is copesetic or not, but I took three canvas I already had painted on and painted gesso over them and I am re-using them. These canvas are 10x10 inches. To reduce costs, I think I can find lots of outdated paintings at thrift stores on canvas and cover them with gesso and paint over them. Perhaps I'll learn how to stretch my own canvas in the future, we shall see.


Today is my painting class and I'm looking forward to it. I'll bring my attempt at the coral black hole to see if my teacher can give me some advice. I want more perspective, to make the hole look deeper and darker, more illiptical, not so round. I also have an idea of what I wanted to put at the bottom of the black hole, more about that later.