"Ode to Donny" - Acrylic Paint / 11x14? / 2003

This is a painting of probably my favorite movie of all-time -- "The Big Lebowski".  Classic stuff I'm telling you.  The Dude, Donny, Walter, and the host of others make this a hilarious movie.  This painting, although tempting to keep for myself, was a gift for good friend, and fellow "Big L" fan, Katie.  As you can see by my first 2 pictures, it's a montage type work, featuring Donny in the middle, The Dude at top left, Walter, at top right, Jesus at bottom left, and the Nihlists at bottom right.  At this point I've also painted "The Big Lebowski" title at the top of the painting, and I've already finished "Walter" and "Jesus".  I've also finished the background for the Donny portion.

As a huge fan of the movie, this made for a very fun painting for me.  Just looking at the pictures I was using made me chuckle to myself, on a very consistent basis.  With Walter and Jesus done, I've moved onto "The Dude" as my next focus.  After finishing "The Dude" and adding some flesh tones to Donny, I started to realize that I needed something in between all the pictures to really tie everything together -- so, seeing as bowling is a huge aspect of the film, it was only appropriate that I put in bowling balls and bowling pins to tie it in.

Here are close-ups, and again, I apologize, poor close-ups of "The Dude" and "Jesus" portions of the painting.  The Dude is looking frustrated, as he often does throughout the movie, and Jesus (self-enunciated and pronounced like J.C.) is licking his bowling ball, because he's strange and that's what The Jesus does...besides "rolling" in the Semi's against The Duders team.

Ah, my favorite character of the movie - Walter Sobchek.  If you've seen the movie you'll recognize the scene here, where Walter is distributing some ashes from a Folgers can.  And, at right, another horrible scan, but the finished product.  The gang's all there, and it's in a happy and appreciate home, with Katie.  So, this was "Ode to Donny" for my good friend Katie's b-day present.  Enjoy Katie!