Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Two New Paintings and One Corrected





I've been continuing having fun with acrylics and in one of my latest works I re-discovered wet-on-wet and plan to stick to that tried and true method from now on. The "Luminous" painting in the previous post bothered me because the sunset had the look of an explosion or maybe a raging fire, which was not what I was looking for. I added shots of blue and in my opinion the later one looks a little more natural to me. I also lightened the grass a bit but have discovered that once a dark background is in place, it is amazingly difficult to lighten.
The painting with the vivid orange sunset behind the wind-driven whitecaps is called "Whitecaps From the West" and is based on all the images of the Canadian Shield, in my heart, where I have spent so much of my time, both back east where I was born and in later years, in the Whiteshell park which to me is a second home. My husband, son, and I used to wilderness camp on a lovely little lake called Bedford Lake and this picture of the rocks, trees and lake could come from there.
The seascape with the pink sunset, done with the wet-on-wet technique, is based on breathtaking scenery from a remake of "Lord of the Flies" which was on TV the other night. As I watched I stored up a number of mental snap shots of lovely transparent turquoise waters, sunsets and the gnarled tree which was on the beach. The painting was drawn from my memory of those scenes and, to me, painting scenes takes me there in my mind in a most absorbing way, and is a wonderful escape into beauty!
One thing I have to work on is photographing my paintings. Whitecaps from the West is 16x20 inches and the other two are 11x14, so even if I wanted to, they're too big to scan. With time and practice I'm sure I'll improve, but in the mean time this is a handy way to show my family and friends what I'm up to.

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