There’s always some archaeology going on in the studio. Recently when I removed the yellow cloths to reveal the blue cloth with flowers (because the blue cloth had been behind the yellow one) it reexposed it to the painting that it inspired.
So it happens that for the time being, the little painting “Love, Desire, Striving” hangs directly above the background that it portrays. And I only just noticed yesterday.
Ah, ever the alert artist ….
This is my crazy little practice painting. I just pile up paint on it. Measuring 8 x 10, it’s already gone through a second swipe and there’ll be a third, maybe a fourth, maybe more.
Last session I painted in very low light using a limited palette of teal, orange, brilliant yellow, primary magenta, thalo blue, and white. I couldn’t see the colors properly, which was interesting, plus there’s a blue curtain over one window that creates pale bluish light in the morning.
So it was interesting. I love to play around with color — with the colors on the canvas and with my own color perception.
Here’s the whole panel of which a detail was featured in the previous post. It measures 24 x 12 inches. I’ve been really pushing the paint, going for the texture.
I notice that I really like the color blue.
It has been tweaked from its appearance in the previous post … there may be more tweaking still … you never know.
Dark and cold is what this is. It measures 24 x 18 inches.
This is not the whole painting — this is just a section of it — just a peek.
The drawing I’m using for the lay-in is a very broad working drawing. I draw then paint, draw some more, paint some more. These are first thoughts.
So when I painted the pond in oil the first time, I also made a drawing in oil pastel. I am really in Degas territory with this one: “il faut refaire la même chose dix fois, cent fois” – you must redo the same thing ten times, a hundred times.”
I must really like this motif.
I had painted the pond before. Not sure when this was — long enough ago that I had forgotten it. Turns out it’s the same size as the one I’m painting now: it also measures 20 x 24. The only difference is that it’s an oil painting.
When the acrylic paintings are finished, I’m going back to this one to do some more work.
I had rehearsed this motif more than I knew. And it’s pleasing to see how close together the two paintings are to each other in overall forms and textures.
Building up the “pond with lilies” in acrylic paint. It measures 20 x 24 inches. After beginning it with drawing, I have kept to the scribbly sensibility.
It all began here:
