Paintblog – The October Country

Since it has been a million minutes since the last post, we’re going to have a twi-night double-header, as Stephen King once said.

First up:

I’ve done a little work on “Concert.”  Presented below are the various stages.

Notice the area just above the right of the main droplet?

Well, that area is TOO BLUE.

Now it isn’t TOO BLUE.  Notice, though, the top part of the droplet.  I added some highlights to that, and I really don’t like it much.

So, let’s see if we can inject a bit more life in that by breaking up the white area with dark(ish) “somethings.”

And now see below.

I also lightened up the upper right corner of the leaf, and painted to the edge on the lower left.

Then, of course, I put the painting on its side because whatever.

Now it looks like some giant green monster is smuggling in water balloons, while also trying to hide a small dark shiny bald man under his wing.

I’m thinking it’s fairly complete, with the exception of the background behind the leaves.  I kind of like what’s there, but I kind of don’t as well.  The problem is, I have no idea what to put there.  I’ve thought of wood, like a wooden fence, but I don’t really want to have a huge color contrast with the green of the leaves.  So I’m going to leave it like this until something suggests itself.

And now onto part two of our saga.

Hey, how about another new one?  Last time I wanted to use up orange and purple, since I rarely paint with those colors.  Let’s start.

Yes, it’s a blank canvas.  I don’t know why I keep showing the paintings in this stage, but I do.  Anyway, let’s start with orange, directly on the canvas.

Here’s a great closeup.  I probably should have just left it at this, right?

I put a piece of masking tape for the horizon, and went to town on the orange.  Then I used what purple was left on the palette from last time to sketch in at the top.

And more purple.

As you can see, the tape is ready to peel off, so I went ahead and did so.

You might be asking, “Now what?” which is exactly what I did.  Well, I recently watched a documentary on Salvidor Dali.  While I like some of Dali’s work, I’m not a huge fan, though there are definitely works of his that are quite atmospheric.  I remembered one with a large, reaching hand.  (I think it’s called “The Lugubrious Game.”)  So I went in that direction.

The above is mostly various yellow shades.  I’m not sure about it, but there it is.  I then did some more work on the purple areaa.

It’s hard to see in the picture below, but we have blue sky coming from the orange horizon up to the purple, with white as a sort of bridging medium.

One problem with using masking tape for the horizon line is that, unless you’re far more careful than I am in brushstrokes, you end up with a very noticeable line right at the edge.  It’s where the paint sort of ran up against the tape.  Usually this can be smoothed down, and I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this.  As a result, the two “arms” had lines right through their elbows.

Above is a partial correction (use sandpaper to wear down the line, then paint over.  You can still see the line through the lighter color.  If we make the paint a bit thicker over the other elbow–

Both of those will have to be worked out in the fine details phase, of course.

I added some red to the purple sky area.

Then I blended some white into the “points” of the red, and added some white streaks to the blue sky area.

Finally (so far), I added some dark areas to the “arms.”

The more I look at it, that doesn’t look like blue sky.  It looks like a pool of water, surrounded by a purplish-white shore, under an angry purple-red sky.

Maybe that’s what it is.  We’ll have to wait and see.