New blog!

Very dull, boring background. Time for a change!

I have finally managed to get this thing online, so what better way to start than to show what I’m working on right now. Until yesterday, I was working on a commissioned painting of two young children. I say “until yesterday,” because it was yesterday that I got frustrated and decided to walk away from it for awhile. I could blame it on the fact that I’ve been sick for the better part of a week now, or that I haven’t painted much recently, or lack of inspiration. Whatever the reason, frustration got the better of me. Paint wasn’t jumping from my knives onto the canvas and forming itself into perfect representations of value and color. My color choices didn’t contribute to a cohesive work of art. Even my ability to mix color seemed lost. That’s when I made the decision to step away and work on something long since decommissioned and forced to live out its life in a dark closet.

For nearly two years, this painting has patiently waited to be revived. It originally started as a nice, neat brushed painting, albeit dull and boring. There are artists far greater than me, and many of them have an amazing ability with brushes. To me, as far as my ability extends, brushes do not allow me to achieve a satisfactory level of texture. I have mostly abandoned brush work in my paintings so this time it would meet a much different fate. Feeling frustrated, I decided this was my chance to break out of my artistic funk. It was time to get loose, colorful, and whimsical.

Now it has a little color!

As you can see, I decided to break from the expectation of white lilies, opting to take a cooler approach and paint the lilies in shades of cool colors. At that point, the background was in need of a little work. I wanted to keep the contrast of the lightly-colored lilies against the deep, dark background, but I wanted a cool feeling from the painting as a whole. And, of course, creating color harmony in the painting was a must.

What would have normally been white lilies have been transformed into something more interesting. As a result of being loose with respect to the form of the lilies I happened upon a visually interesting side effect. Notice how the paint is pulled from right side of all the lilies. It’s almost as if the color is being rejected by a normally colorless object, or a force (think wind) is stripping the lilies of their beauty. I’ve decided to keep this interesting little quirk and go with it, however this makes me ponder another issue: do I name the painting something simple and obvious, like Lilies? Or something a little more daring, a little more whimsical? Something like, Windblown. Maybe I need to put this painting on the shelf  for two more years until the title comes to me…

Color, harmony, and texture...three things I love!