It's Not What You See

"What screws us up the most is the picture in our mind of what its supposed to be."

Good advice for life and art.

That was the theme of my art this week. I was attempting to paint the bridge in Little Rock that is historical, sitting in front of the modern Clinton library. The only problem is that we visited during spring break, and although the daffodils were blooming around Arkansas, the plants near the bridge weren't. Add that to a cold, gray day, and I didn't have much to go on.

It provided me an excellent opportunity to experiment with kicking all the colors up a notch. I was going for full-on colorist approach. Nothing was going to be realistic.

Okay, so it looks better in person. The photo also cuts off the bottom which repeats the orange. And I put that wonderful quote there too!

Cobalt Turquoise, Magenta, and Orange do wonders for making this bridge exciting. My class enjoyed seeing me break out of the normal. I'll probably try again down the road with some more muted tones. We'll see!

The Problem With Grass

No, the problem with grass is not that it keeps growing, although that is a problem if you have to mow! (I am all about xeriscaping  myself.) The problem I am talking about is painting grass. It can be gosh darn frustrating.

I have found that over time I have often avoided large fields of grass, or even one color of flowers (if we aren't doing at least semi-abstract) because getting the right texture without painting all the leaves has seemed hard. I watch my teacher whip out grass by scrambling her brush around, and it still looks like grass. For me, nope, it tends to look like a mottled background or a child's picture.

Having said all of that, I tackled it in this week's project.

(Please excuse the photo, it wasn't flat when I photographed it.)

One layer in, and I was already happy with my mountains and water. Can't you just see the mist!

It took 2 layers to get the man right. And I love those pine trees on the side of the mountain, a little blue in them really made them work.

But it took about 5 different layers to work on the grass, including one point where I had to leave the room just so I wouldn't have to look at the painting for a few minutes because I was so frustrated. Yes, it was that bad. I began to wish that I had just left the foreground very abstract.

But I didn't.

I kept going, and I have to admit, it turned out alright. I can see that the hill in front is in the foreground, and the rest of the mountain fades back. I would have loved to add a few more pops of color and excitement, but I decided to stop while I was ahead. No use throwing in some new colors and having to start that grass over!

Mixed Media

Several students in my class are into mixed media these days. Scrapbook paper is having its heyday. Some of the most amazing artwork has come out of these students, so I finally decided I needed to try to experiment with it...only I took it a step towards wild, literally...

Before I leave Texas (I am moving out of state in a few months), I decided it was time to embrace the state flower: the bluebonnet. It has long been a staple of landscape painting, made famous by Onderdonk. He really made Texas landscape painting its own category.

But when I told my class my intentions, I think most of them rolled their eyes. Every Texas artist sooner or later tries to paint them, and most of them are not considered to be successful. If not trite--a field with the requisite live oak, then there is significant criticism about the right color of the bluebonnet.

It seems I have entered a minefield.

I actually started painting a truck that I wanted to be surrounded by bluebonnets, and I ended up leaving it in a grassy field.

I still plan on painting this gorgeous old thing in the bluebonnets, but it is just a glorious mess of lights and darks for the moment.

On a picture that could definitely be considered trite in normal circumstances, bluebonnets along some railroad tracks, I decided to loosen up.

I started with some wood grain paper and peacock feathers paper. I had a clear vision of an "X" composition. Then, I needed some texture. What I decided to add had everyone in my class pulling over each student in the class to ask, "Guess what she used for the texture?" Can you guess?

Roots. I had a dead plant and pulled the roots out of the pot, dirt and all.

I began glueing them in with thick gloss medium, but I realized it was going to be difficult to work with because so many of the roots wanted to stick out, more 3D than I liked, so I applied a layer of gesso that would also allow me to paint without constantly loosing my texture and dirt to the ground.

Next came the paint.

At least it kept it interesting.

Two more, not mixed media but some good texture:

In a Fog...Painting & Results

I recently posted about some of my successes. Now, I'm going to post about a less successful painting...

I love bright, bold colors. Dramatic contrasts. Paintings like my ballerinas exemplify that. However, I know that to evolve, I need to learn softness and subtle changes. After visiting the Houston's Monet & the Seine exhibit, I decided it was time to give it a chance. Monet painted a lot of soft winter scenes, where the main color is white.

Every color is softened with white.

I decided to practice using a photograph I took on a trip to Carmel. It was a cold day, and there was a mist in the air. The water appeared more gray than blue. But what I loved about that day is how the yellow flowers in the field glowed through the otherwise grim day.

The first issue I had was the color scheme.

This photograph didn't naturally lend itself to one of the color schemes. My teacher suggested yellow and purple. I understood her reasoning. The yellow would contrast and glow, and purple for mountains and mist is pretty common. However, I just couldn't see it and feel it. Thus, I did a couple of studies.

One is in purple and yellow. The other red, blue, yellow. The red, blue, yellow spoke to me. (I may still go back one day and try with softer purples, but we'll see.)

The next issue I had was making that soft, misty feeling of the fog. I needed to keep my colors muted with lots of white, the greens muted with blue, and keep all the edges soft. One of the main problems I keep having is mixing subtle changes in color, whether it is for these soft edges or for skin color. In that way, I was a little more successful with this painting.

I achieved softness, but I lost a little depth. I had trouble defining the foreground without losing the softness. Also, I think the yellow competes for attention with the red roofs. If my goal hadn't been to make those flowers glow, I think the painting would have been more cohesive.

Anyway, another thing I learned from the Monet exhibit was that even he felt the need to keep painting the same scene again and again. He painted studies and pieces of things before he got it the way he wanted. And he often just painted the same thing in different ways and with slightly different colors schemes. One sign at the exhibit said that Monet went out one day to a bend in the river with something like 10 canvas. He painted the same scene from the first scintilla of daylight until the final shadow of the evening fell. 

I guess if I make this painting 10 times, it will improve...