new work

The urn is contrusted out of several layers of preprinted paper. These papers are thin enough to manipulate and provide me the oportunity eliminate a couple of layers of painting.
The second step is to apply thin washes of color to manipulate the tones and establish the shadows and highlights. Then I wash those with colors to blend into the background layers. The third photo shows a detail of the cutout and a little of the sketch for the shield medallion.
By now you should know that I hate having plain vases. When I look at the knick knacks that gramma Ada had, I see that there is yet a Bavarian influence in my work. Since the urn is the representation of myself, going a little heavy on the German isn't a bad idea. As the theme is a fortress around a heart (thank you Sting for the imagery and the song) the germanic overtones dovetail nicely with the work I am doing in other areas of my life; genealogy, german heraldric devices, translating Rammstein lyrics, et all. But the sheild medallion, beyond aesthetics, reinforces the feeling that I need to protect myself. Of course the crack in the vase runs behind the sheild, giving the impression of a band aid and thus illustrates closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. Classic me.
I don't have all the pieces put together yet. I am stuck. With every layer I seem to be obliterating the distinctions between back and mid ground. It is not muddled. But it is not right. The vase needs to stand out from the background in color as much as in motif. Not sure how to resolve the issue. I am considering applying a MW techinique but so far nothing is really coming together.
And this, people, is the difficulty in pricing artwork. Straight formulas either undercut the effort bby only considering materials or they inflate the value based on standard time. How do you justify the thinking part of the process with a dollar value? Sometimes art is not play but provocation to do bodily harm in the form of a pint of ben And Jerry's in one sitting.