Finally getting a chance to sit down and start this painting. Feels like it has been forever since I've done a full sized piece. I think end of October was the last major one I completed. This piece is 30x17 inches, the biggest that I've done in a while. I really need a bigger desk...working on something this large gets kinda awkward. There was an npr segment I was listening to the other day about a guy who was looking for the perfect couch. He spent 20 years with a ratty old so NOT-perfect couch simply because he was waiting to buy the one. Well, that's how I feel about my desk. One of these days I'll find it!
So far the cloud-swirls are emerging mostly as I have in mind. It's almost like painting abstractly though. If you look at the previous post I made with the sketch, I only had very simple and light lines marked for some basic cloud shapes. The rest is coming out as I paint, pulling out the irregularities of the washes and emphasizing certain elements.
At a stopping place for tonight because I intend to spray some fixative tomorrow morning and try to get the sky colors even darker. Don't want to spray tonight and have the fumes stinking up my office over-night. I've learned a bit from my experiments with fixative layers in previous paintings these past few months, so I've cut out a very rough mask from some scrap pieces of paper that I lay over the bottom unpainted areas. I didn't feel up to cutting out all the branches and arms of the windmills in a mask, so for the main bulge of the machine/tree, I just loosely taped a plastic bag so that there would be a softened border for the masked area.
So far the cloud-swirls are emerging mostly as I have in mind. It's almost like painting abstractly though. If you look at the previous post I made with the sketch, I only had very simple and light lines marked for some basic cloud shapes. The rest is coming out as I paint, pulling out the irregularities of the washes and emphasizing certain elements.
At a stopping place for tonight because I intend to spray some fixative tomorrow morning and try to get the sky colors even darker. Don't want to spray tonight and have the fumes stinking up my office over-night. I've learned a bit from my experiments with fixative layers in previous paintings these past few months, so I've cut out a very rough mask from some scrap pieces of paper that I lay over the bottom unpainted areas. I didn't feel up to cutting out all the branches and arms of the windmills in a mask, so for the main bulge of the machine/tree, I just loosely taped a plastic bag so that there would be a softened border for the masked area.
It's so exciting to see your art emerging and to learn your techniques as you go along.
ReplyDeletePS I gave my daughter a skin of your art...the one with the faces hanging on the tree...for Xmas, she was thrilled and we now both have Kindle skins, mine is your Aquarius, I love it.
Oh no, I started my search for the perfect couch several months ago...if I had known it might take 20 years I would have started looking years ago! :laughs: I hope your search for a desk doesn't take that long.
ReplyDeleteThe cloud-swirls look fantastic. Really like the first image and being able to see the whole piece on your work space.
I've had it since I was in grade school, and have been looking for a replacement for at -least- a decade.
ReplyDeleteYou are really inspiring!
ReplyDeleteReading in your Dreamscapes book made me realize I should and could be much more detailed and take more time for every picture until every single spot is as I want it to look like :)
Thank you for that!
Beautiful! I love how the cloud shapes are emerging in the paint! :)
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