"Leo"Medium: Watercolor
Size: 10x14.5 inches
for Llewellyn's 2011 astrological calendar
Size: 10x14.5 inches
for Llewellyn's 2011 astrological calendar
The lion. Loyal, proud, generous, outgoing and with a flair for drama, glories in leadership.
Now that I've gotten to the painting part of this project, things are much more relaxing!
So finally something not-green. Well, at least not predominantly green!
There used to be a time years ago when I didn't like orange and yellow. But after forcing myself to paint the full spectrum of colors when I chose the color themes for the tarot, the windows were thrown open.
One thing I like to do when looking at other artists' work, is to identify the characteristics in the paintings that I would normally steer away from in my own paintings, but that work really well in their cases. Sometimes it might be the strong use of a color I don't like, or an odd compositional element. Identifying those pieces, figuring out why I steer away from it in my work (fear of "ruining" a piece? never thought to utilize something that way? old preconceptions that have become habit?) and then figuring out how I can incorporate it into a future painting, is one way of pushing myself. No need to attack problems all at once though. Picking small elements and focusing on that one thing for a piece is a major step.
Incredible...
ReplyDeleteOne question: You posted the sketches for these last week (I think?), and mentioned you were starting the painting on Monday (day before yesterday). As this is the second one you have posted this week, I am curious, just how long do one of these take you to complete once you start painting? From what I can tell, it goes pretty fast...
I started painting Cancer on Sunday actually. So far they've taken about 2 days each to paint. The finalized sketches were about 1 day (so took me two weeks to sketch out all twelve of them). And the preliminary sketches before that I don't really keep track of, but I usually mull things over in my head for several days while working on other stuff, and did a lot of those initial sketches when I had some downtime during conventions. So in generally for a piece this size, 3+ days total.
ReplyDeleteI love it! So gorgeous, I was planning on only getting the print of my sign but I think I may have to get them all. The colors of the foliage just blows me away...
ReplyDeleteI do like the warm colors. The lion is especially beautiful.
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