Paintblog – “Concert” September 23

Yes, our new painting finally has a title thanks to Feynmangroupie.    I like the idea of a reflected event, and when she mentioned that she could see a bandstand, I could immediately see the conductor and a couple of standing audience members.  So “Concert” it is.  I also like that the word implies the shared effect of the two water-drops.

Anyway, when we last met (before the Great Unpleasantness), our canvas looked like this.

The last detail worked on was the hidden drop.  Since it was painted over with dark colors, I’d have to wait until they dried until I could work on it.  Below you can see the before and after, with the white highlights added in–particularly on the left.

 

Below, some highlights added the leaf below the main droplet.  I wanted to give it a more substantive look, so that it would appear better able to support the droplet’s weight.

   

And here is where the whole thing stood at that point.

I added some highlights to the edge of the leaf with the pointed bit.

Then I went to work on highlights on the main droplet.

 

I also added some highlighting to the back, rightward-edge of the leaf.

Then I stood back and noticed one big problem.

As you can see, the highlights on the drop don’t match up at all with the highlights on the leaf.  I tried to lighten up the upper left corner, but it wasn’t enough.

So I went further, and actually used a bunch of white in the upper left corner.

That looks a little better, lighting-wise (as you can see below).

The problem for me is that it looks like it could easily just be over-exposure, or a flare from a camera flash.  So I added some “ribs” to the leaf, via shadow, to make it look more like natural plant coloration in sunlight.

 

As you’ll see at the end, it looks much better.  But first, just because I like them, here’s a closeup of the droplet as it currently appears.

And the leaf below the main droplet’s leaf.

Finally, here is what we look at today.  I’d still like to make the upper left seem a little more “warm” or “organic” in appearance, and am thinking about how to do so.  I’ve thought about very subtle yellow hints here and there, but I’m worried that it might look as if the leaf is decaying.

But there’s time for this.  Now that the blog has been repaired, I feel as if I can press on.  Funny how documenting one’s work suddenly makes the work itself dependent on the document.

Anyway, thanks as always for stopping by.  With a little luck updates may become more frequent.

Well, THAT was fun…

I’ve just spent the last couple of days trying to fix this blog. Comments were repaired by Yahoo tech support, but then I could no longer access the control panel or any of the other functions. The blog itself seemed to be fine, which lessened the worry somewhat, but damn do I need to do regular backups. (I thought Yahoo’s “snapshot” thing did that, but I guess I was mistaken.)

Anyway, more soon. Providing everything works….

UPDATE: Aaaaaaand, comments are broken again. It’s time to commence some serious drinking.

Paintblog – September 6

Greetings and felicitations.  Hip hip hoorah. Tally ho!

When we last left the paintblog world, we had a painting that looked like this:

Fair enough, it was just starting to take shape.  And so, why not push it into a somewhat better shape?

The inner droplet looked a bit too bright for me, so I painted a bunch of stuff in, then decided I liked that less, and darkened it up more. Didn’t take any interim pix, sorry about that, but you know, omelets and eggs.

Of course, that’s a bit too dark, so I took out some small brushes and put in dabs of color.  At present, the painting looks like this–

One of the things that I like about the original droplet is that the randomness of the various colors inside actually works really well–it looks like it’s reflecting something “off camera” as it were, something we can’t quite see.  And I’m trying to shore that impression up with the shadow droplet.  Obviously, being half-hidden by leaf, it can’t be quite as “obvious” as the main droplet, but I’d like it to contribute.

Which means I’m not quite done with the inner droplet.  The problem I face for the moment is that dark greens and blues tend to take a long time to dry, so anything I might add now would be a blend and not a stand-alone highlight.  So, I just have to give it more time.  But I do have to confess I like where this is going.  I don’t know where it’s going, and it may end up in someplace boring, but at least it’s SOMETHING.  SOMETHING I can point to and say, “Well, I did that.”

There’s not a lot these days where I can do that.  So I scramble to gather accomplishments, as any scavenger, any scavenger worth the name, does.  And perhaps, who knows…

Anyway, that is the state of things.  As always, I appreciate your visits.  Thank you!