Tag: work in progress

Evolution

Several weeks ago I started an acrylic painting of a building at the end of a road. It was sort of painted in a traditional manner, meaning I was trying to represent reality. Truthfully, it bored the hell out of me, but I kept it as it was fairly decent in my opinion, but it did put me to sleep. 

Working with brighter colors of late has really been exciting for me as I feel much more of a connection to the colors I use than I do to subject matter. Subject matter can be anything – but colors express more to me and are more true to who I am (a magpie reincarnated as an old bat) than subject matter in general. So, I took the painting and painted over it. Below is the original.

This is a photograph I took and it is pretty crap (above) as there is a lot of weird stuff going on. I didn’t think it scanning it because of its size. This morning I scanned my current iteration of this painting.

I like this much better, but it is not quite done. I need to work on the road in the foreground as well as details of the building. More windows, fix windows, fewer windows? Create some focus at the end of the road? Fix the road? Cast some shadows – creating light and dark – across the road?

Many things to consider here. I am going to let it sit and ignore it awhile. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Acrylic, canvas, 18×24, scanned on an Epson V600.

WIPs

WIP means “work in progress” – and here are my current ones. Both are causing me no end of frustration – but despite that, I am having fun (or so I keep telling myself).

This is a rose which might be turning into a peony or a flower from another planet. I am using 9×12 Uart sanded paper (600) and a couple of sets of pastel pencils. The larger set has 24 colors, the other has 12. I am trying to paint a light pink rose, but there is no pencil, even combined with white, which will give me what I want. So, I carry on, and eventually I will find a stopping point. It is fun to do, and as I am not taking it seriously, I can blunder off in many directions as I learn the quirks of pastel pencils. I have soft pastels, which would be far easier, but I am determined to finish this with what I started with.

Here, more painting with the fluid acrylics. The point is to paint white on white, and so that means really looking at what is white, and what is white in shadow or with reflected color. The center of the flowers are greenish yellow with a bit of black, and there is one stem which appears greenish in the reference photo, while all the other stems are black. I can see flaws in the paint where it was diluted with water, and the brush work is not the finest. I wonder if I will need to get out the heavy body acrylics for this effort – but, again, I need to practice to learn the quirks of the fluid acrylics.

So, there we are. Done for the day.