Very Orange

I’ve rewritten this post, so though I reblog it’s actually brand new.

Aletha Kuschan's Weblog

Once you decide it’s going to be orange, there’s just no turning back.

Complementary colors are ones that appear especially intense because they contain opposite frequencies of light.  Blue and orange, red and green, yellow and violet are all color opposites. One subject that I portray often in my art — the koi pond — has a natural blue/orange opposition since many of the fish are orange and the water, reflecting the sky, is blue. But the sea shells I collect have strong passages of orange too and placed against a blue cloth they stand out very boldly.

Exploration of color is one of the principle motives of my artwork. So I try to understand color, making a particular effort to explore different colors and different color combinations. Toward that end I collect objects from different color groups. The orange vase that sits nestled among the objects on my still…

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Thoughts up Close

Aletha Kuschan's Weblog

When you look at the details of a picture, you see how its illusion is created.  The image above is a detail of one section of the flower bouquet.  It zooms in on the flower patterns of the cloth that’s piled up against the vase of flowers.  From this vantage, much of the expression of three dimensions is lost to sight.  The shadows and the lights appear to exist on the same plane.  In the detail, one realizes how much the third dimension of this particular drawing was created by the motif as a whole since without the whole motif we cannot see distinctions of figure and ground.

These “textile” flowers are as impressionistic as were the “real” flowers in the vase.  Both are abstractions: shapes that appear in masses whose details consist of lines, hatchings and scribbles.  So, for instance I began some of the flowers of the textile’s pattern as rough, smeared shapes…

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The Doll with Big Hair

Sometimes a doll can be a superb figure drawing model, especially when she’s got great hair.

Aletha Kuschan's Weblog

The doll I drew yesterdaywas such a good model, I decided to invite her back.  And she decided to accept.  And, boy, can she pose!

These were some of her first poses.  That’s before we revved up the fan and started playing rock music after the manner of Seinfeld’s Kramer.

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