| If
I'm not mistaken, I was using olive oil on this painting. Watercolors,
of course, create some great effects with things like oil and salt,
and olive oil worked fairly well on You
Can Be Loved and What You
Think. Unlike those two paintings, however, there was no
gold spray paint used as a base coat, so there has never been any
peeling or decay. The oil also has a good effect on the color, giving
this piece more of a dark, Mediterranean feel. At least the color
scheme that comes to my mind when I think of "Mediterranean."
The
title has a pretty interesting backstory. It's based on this old,
obscure computer game (early '80s) called "The House of Usher."
This was one of the countless homebrew creations for home computers;
little more than a second-hand Donkey Kong ripoff. The problem was,
"Usher" was extremely buggy and wouldn't ever work. The
game begins with the hero making his entrance while these operatic
chords play (A-B-A-A-A). When the music stops, he just falls through
the floor and dies. It's like an accidental Wile E. Coyote routine.
Anyway, when the game is over, you are taken to a rainbow-colored
screen with one crypic message:
The
Earl of Usher is Spider-Man.
I
have no idea what that's supposed to mean. |
