There's No Use in Surrender

There’s No Use in Surrender

9” x 12” painting done with gouache, prismacolors, polychromos pencils, acrylic paint, and oil pastel on Stonehenge drawing paper. Initially meant to convey abject hopelessness, “There’s No Use in Surrender” turned towards cautious hope as I did the same, adapting the initial subject by using imagery that could be read as either foreboding or peaceful.

The final painting.

This painting went through many iterations. The “I’m [nauseous] - I’m dying!” drawn across this thumbnail references a viral image of school desk graffiti.

The beginning linework.

Stages of the self portrait. I’d go back and forth between colored pencil layers and gouache layers to get unique color profiles and textures.

Progress picture of the center painting, which was later removed for not aligning well with the meaning I was trying to convey. This was a painting of a screenshot of “Martyrs”, the 2008 French New Extremism film.

The text on this paper was erased and rewritten often.

The reference for this was the Tollund Man.

This was the final iteration til very recently.