Crossing a Boundary--My own Degas

I crossed a boundary recently. I finally produced something that surprised me at how well it turned out.

I love Popular Photography and Backpacker magazines. I found a lot of inspiration from these photos. A winning photograph in Popular Photography was of some ballet dancers waiting behind stage. The photographer altered the photos digitally to make it look more like a painting than a photograph- a bit Degas.

Although the photograph was one large spread, I decided that I liked the photograph split according to the pages of the magazine. I painted one of the blue ballerinas, and I’m working on another of the pink ballerinas.

I think what caught my attention was the dramatic lighting. I like the light falling on the dancers’ skins and the dark background. I also love the photograph for the dancers of different sizes.

Abstract Beach Scenes- Using Leftover Canvas

During the Winter Break, I found some Christmas canvas leftover from a project. My kids and I had made several Christmas themed sayings and trees last year, but they didn’t make it through the storage without incident. I decided not to hang them this year. I looked at these four square canvas and thought about using some gesso on them. Since we had used scrapbook paper on the Christmas crafts, I decided that I needed to add some more texture to them. Thus, it was time to experiment…

Here, you will see 3 square canvases. (Number 4 was a throw out. Awful color. Awful composition. It just didn’t work and ended up with papers sitting on it.)

The simple beach of 3 stripes was just experimenting with texture and color. A peer in my art class had used something similar as a background, but I wanted it to stand out.

The beach with orange fish is based on my love of scrapbook materials. I used water-look scrapbook paper, sandy-look pages, and the fish. The water and sand got painted over, but I let the fish stand out.

The third painting is based off something I saw on pinterest. I loved the ocean color and wanted to work on the composition.

Now, the fourth painting I pictured here (the rectangular one) is an abstraction of a picture I took in St. Petersburg. I liked the composition of boats, but the light did make for a very interesting water. I am hoping to add some sea glass to this picture as the sails.

My overall take is that underpainting in warmer coolers has significantly improved my abstractions. It makes them more interesting and cohesive.