Painting 2

Noah Cummins “Meatplow”

12x12, Acrylic paint on canvas, 2022

This is my social issue painting. Originally I wanted to do a dark silhouette of a bald guy with big, sad, glowing eyes and no other features. We have to do at least 3 weeks of work on a project and I was able to get the original idea done in like a day or two. I needed to add more to it so I gave the guy some curly hair because I thought that would be fun to paint. Then I added some chains over his face to use up the rest of my time. I tried to paint a symbolic representation of what I thought of when I think about men’s mental health.

I mixed black, white, and some blue for my background. I used a few coats of this color. Then I painted the black silhouette and gave it a few coats. Then I painted the yellow eyes, the wrinkles underneath, and then I defined the jaw and shoulders with a dark gray color. For the eyes I didn’t paint the edges with as many coats so they seemed like they had depth and sunk into the head. Then I mixed a blond color and a brown color and started painting strands of hair, starting from around the edge of the head and ending a little past the shoulders. Then I spent a long time highlighting the hair and going over it again. My last step was painting the chains. I went over them with a bunch of different grays and a metallic silver to give them a little depth.

This painting was made for my social issue. The issue I chose was men’s mental health. Originally I wasn’t going to paint my hair in it, but I had to tell my audience that this is just my perception of men’s mental health being neglected, and not what everybody sees. The eyes are the windows to the soul, and that’s why I made them yellow and bright compared to the rest of the painting. One eye is sad looking and the other is indifferent and plain. The sad eye is supposed to represent the actual emotion men feel when they’re sad, and the indifferent eye is supposed to represent a man’s self perception when they are sad, meaning that they think it’s their nature to ignore whatever sadness they are feeling. The last thing that a man might have that’s speaking truthfully when he’s sad is his eyes. That’s another reason why they are bright yellow. The eyes might cry for help. Obviously there are wrinkles under his eyes because he’s tired. His skin is mat black because that’s what I imagined it’d feel like on the inside, and the chains are there to make him feel trapped and confined. You can see hair being squeezed between the chains and crushing his head. I think of a headache when I look at that part. The final element I want to mention is some of the hair that’s crawling over the chains. I thought this could be symbolic of whoever I painted nearing an outburst. Maybe there is a soul that feels pathetic that’s itching to yell at something once everything that could be bothering him just becomes too much to handle.

I think painting the chains was probably the hardest element to paint. First I had to choreograph where I wanted them to go, and then I had to tediously paint every chain link with highlights. When I started painting them I thought I ruined my painting, but this risk ended up paying off in my opinion. After I touched up some sloppy looking area’s and added some different colors into the chains I felt better about them. They looked pretty decent wrapping around the hair I think. If I had to do it again I’d be a little bit more patient with the chains because I was getting mad while painting them. They ended up a little sloppy, especially the ones going across the face.

This style is surreal. I think I paint the best meaningfully in this style. Surrealism lets you use elements from reality in a more symbolic way. I like the places where the chains start and end, but my favorite part is the one lock of hair that’s curving out of the chains covering the head on the left side.

3d printed Mach 5 painted with acrylic paint.