Painting is still a learning process, or as I refer to it, a struggle. It's rare that I produce a piece I am 100% okay with. Going back and forth on the amount of realism I want to inject into my work is a part of the struggle. The small oil sketch above is a light in the tunnel for me, or perhaps a point-change mutation with beneficial traits being expressed, if you prefer.
This piece, Callimorphia dominula, was created for a colleague as a Secret Santa gift. (The recipient is extremely talented, and though I don't often refer to folks at my day-job, keeping the two worlds separate, you can see Ash's paintings here.) Since her name is Ash, I painted leaves from an ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior), and a Scarlet Tiger Moth - - or is it one of the faerie-like Meliae?
The mutation for me was in the attempt to create a thickly-painted -one might say slathered- background, and a realistic foreground.
The background here on the left is obscured, partly because I put the still-very-wet painting onto my scanner, and it left shadows of the sticky paint when it scanned. What you're missing there is largely off-white, with a hint of blue-green.
In the coming months, I hope to get a number of paintings developed, and this little sketch feels like I've uncovered a small but vital technique that breaks a block I've had for a while.
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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.
11 comments:
This is absolutely fabulous!
Lucky recipient, Ash!
Ash's stuff looks very nice.
And this shows a lot of promise. Frankly, someone with a more minimalistic approach could easily claim it was a finished piece...
what type of scanner do you use that can scan wet paint and not have paint left on the glass? (not that i tried a similar thing with a photocopier once or anything...)
Thanks Leslie!
Thanks Sean! And I'll pass your comment on to Ash.
Traumador, it's a magical scanner from happy land, made from gumdrops! (Ooops, I'm commenting and drinking cold medication at the same time.)
The glass totally gets wet paint stuck to it. That's what all those weird grey brushstrokes are on the left.
I wipe it down with a gentle cloth after. Quite a number of my paintings are tacky when I first scan them.
AS always, I love your artwork!! I'd love to get a scanner like that. Where can I find one?
Any regular scanner should do it, Raptor.
And thanks!
nice post
I like it, looks great. I'm also excited because I'm getting your calendar for christmas from my wife.
Thanks for the compliment! And for getting the calendar.
I've gotten positive feedback on the calendar so far, and I'm happy with RedBubble's prints.
Merry Christmas to Jess and yourself, Eric!
Merry Christmas to you too!
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