Musewo Process (Archive)

Progress shots of the Gull Musewo

Back in the early aughts, Elfwood and Epilogue.net were without a doubt deeply instrumental in helping me to rediscover my love of science fiction and fantasy art. I recently discovered two old photo archives, one of which was used for linking images to posts on various online forums. My "mutant sex worker" series was based on the idea of a future where prostitution and gene splicing leads to a growing fetish for hybrid fantasy women. I called them "musew" and later "musewo". The first ones were large acrylic paintings done on illustration board and then peeled from the cardboard backing for easier storage and possibly scanning on a drum scanner. Drum scanners were a good option back then for large format scanning, but required that the artwork be flexible. That said, I had to make due with a cheap digital camera or tiling images in from a desktop scanner in Photoshop.

I was very fortunate to have incredibly generous models for this series. My designer friend Shiela volunteered to model for this sea gull-inspired musewo. Others included a cat, dragonfly, bat and fish. I was still relatively self-taught at this stage in my life when it came to painting. An acrylic glazing technique was briefly described to me by my ART 125A Basic Design instructor, Patricia Ancona back in the mid-90s at City College of San Francisco. To this day, it remains my preferred painting method in acrylics and oil.