Summer RhythmsWhew! With the new job of Assistant Principal, my quantity of free time over the summer plummeted. Thanks to all of you who have kept on, occaisionally asking where I am...
The above painting is the third one I've done in 2009. And since I've decided to keep the focus of my blog on my art, well, that's why posts are a little far and few between. The motivation for this work came from the gallery in St. Louis where I show my work, Gallery M. Susan, the nice owner over there decided for a juried show this fall called 'Beauty Is...'. I needed to get her some new work, so I went over to Tower Grove Park in St. Louis where they have gorgeous tropical waterlily ponds, and I took a bunch of pictures. One photo ended up on my laptop as wallpaper. Perhaps that can be a future post. We can put it up as a sort of challenge. What do you think?
This is actually a small part of a much larger picture of white waterlilies. When i went to print off the whole file, it only showed this much. I was just about to delete the print job, when the composition struck me, and I was intrigued by the water, the curves of the pads offset by the straight lines of the stems. One person told me that it was too dark, but I like using my darkest pastels, sometimes.
This was the first painting where I used Mineral Spirits to create an underpainting. I painted the water a very dark green/brown, and the leaves a yellow ochre. If i were to do it again, I think I would choose complementary colors instead. I think some red or orange showing through the leaves would be striking.
Until next time, when I'll let you know how the Gallery Opening does this Friday evening...
Pastel Guy
