Sometimes It Just Doesn't Work

I was working on the painting of the canal that I posted earlier, but despite help from my teacher, it is one of my fails.

There are a lot of things that worked for it: the composition led the eye pleasantly, the colors provided  movement and contrast, and there were a lot of areas of complementary color. I also think the brushwork to the right of the paining was pretty good. But there was a lot that just didn't work for me. I could have kept working it, but I gave myself permission to give up. Maybe one day I will go back and start over with looser brushwork.

I have to admit it was fun to colorize Cambridge, UK! There was not a day of good sunshine when I visited, so if I want color, I have to invent it.

Impressionism...Color

When asked what kind of art I like, I usually say impressionist, or as time goes on realistic abstract. Both to me mean that the art will be something recognizable, but not realistic. Painting, to me, is an opportunity to edit the colors to create the feeling of the place because I often find that photographs are much duller than the feelings of happiness or beauty that I feel at the time.

That works sometimes, but sometimes that it difficult to do. I sometimes have trouble seeing the possibilities, so I decided to use Photoshop to colorize the photo I'm working from and SEE the underlying colors.

This photo was taken in Cambridge, UK, so you know that the colors were nothing like this! But I've found it helps me see the undertones. It also helps me see the color of the light.

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!

Coloring Winter

I think I should be deemed a colorist, someone who wants to change and increase the colors of reality. That has been my mission during this holiday season--to experiment with color schemes. One interesting color scheme is the tertiary color scheme. The most standard of these is red, blue, yellow.

Let's consider this picture.

Now this one could go a couple of ways. It could be a analogous complimentary color scheme of red/orange/yellow and bluish-green. Or you could make it tertiary of red, yellow, blue with the street being bluish and the green being more bluish.

Winter scenes are common with the other tertiary color scheme: orange, purple, green. That is what I decided to try. I had noticed this triad in this Monet painting in St. Louis.

First, I started with the instructions for a painting from a book, with a similar color scheme.

Then, I chose a photo from my trip to Colorado, similar to this one.

The Aspens were bright yellow. The mountains were brown/gray with snow on top. But to make my color scheme work, the mountains became purple and the Aspens went slightly more orange. Now, yellow and purple could have worked as a color scheme too, but something else would have needed to happen with the green.