The images above are of the paintings I've finished since I began this blog in early August. In each, the color is very saturated and quite intense. This is by design, since I love color and tend to choose things to paint that satisfy that feeling. The farm machinery that I use as my subjects are painted in strong colors, with each company identified by specific colors: a John Deere is always bright green and yellow; a Ford tractor is blue; International, red; the Houle liquid manure spreader is a peculiar acidy blue-green; the blue and green of Green Tilt identifies it as an Ag-Bagger.
Which is why I decided to work on this image next, with its muted neutral tones; I wanted a change from intense color. I like the warm grays against the dark blackish square, overlapped by crossing pipes of rust and translucent white. I decided the crop the image in the study, which will be a 12 inch square painting, to make a tighter composition, so that the lower edge of the rusty pipe will sit at the bottom edge of the panel; this will make for some visual fun for me as I create the illusion of a form popping forward from the window that is the picture plane. The underdrawing in ink, below, establishes a value structure for the egg tempera paint to follow.
Nice seeing them all together too Altoon!
ReplyDeletebeautiful grouping at the top!
ReplyDeleteand good for you for breaking out of line!
thanks, Mona and rappel, for your comments. It's fun to make a "wall" of paintings. And starting this muted-color piece makes me think of doing more like it in future.
ReplyDeleteAltoon, thank you for the review of equipment colors in that wonderful collection of recent paintings that we've watched develop. I can look at these as entirely abstract, but my naturalist-mind was saying "what is it? Baler, tedder, chopper? Something I've never seen before?" (I haven't been farming for 30 years now.) So I appreciate knowing a bit more about your models.
ReplyDeleteAnd I like the look of the new one.
I do admit to loving your bold color paintings, Altoon, though in a flattish plane you have caught the foreshadowing of the brown pipe and also drawn our eyes to the color in muted tones, not to speak of the impact of seeing the corners of items, close-ups, pleasing or evocative in their own right.
ReplyDeleteLoved your turnip soup by the way!
Linda
thank you, dear readers, for your attention and your interest.
ReplyDeleteThe ink study is exquisite - it is what I want to fill my mind with.
ReplyDeleteCarolyn
thanks so much Carolyn. In the process of making an egg tempera, that ink drawing has now been covered by paint.
ReplyDelete