September 11, 2009

Working on Red Cone: Tires


I've been working on the black forms behind the red cone, which are a couple of old tires, if you hadn't guessed. Farms keep these on hand, sometimes huge piles of them, to use as weights on top of the plastic covering silage in bunkers.

The first layer of grays on the large curve turned out to carry too much light, popping it forward visually, so I darkened it somewhat. I think the form is now sitting back where it should be while also curving forward in space. I photographed a detail of the painting so that you can see the brushwork more clearly. When I saw this image on the computer, I was actually surprised at how energetic the strokes looked, perhaps too much so in a couple of spots. I'll have to go back and finesse some of those marks, wearing my reading glasses.

2 comments:

  1. The tires look quite graceful, odd to think of tires that way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, you've hit on one an important part of my painting project: finding beauty in ordinary, even ugly, things.

    ReplyDelete