Thursday, July 17, 2008

Sheep and negatve painting

The painting of the sheep is done... for now. I’ll be tweaking a few things on this painting before I sign it. This is normal for me – most of my paintings are at about 90% done when I park them on the wall or my table. If I knew what I wanted to do it would be simple. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and I’ll know, but probably not. I used to push until I finished TOTALLY – something I learned to do as an accountant. But, I don’t have to do that with paintings. I can let the back of my brain think about this while I do something else. This has been a huge learning for me – it’s true about paintings (for me anyways) and it’s true about life. I’m much more relaxed knowing that everything does not have to be finished today. And it’s a good thing too because sometimes life isn’t predictable, is it?

As I said yesterday, I want to make a bigger version of this painting sometime soon. I’ll take what I’ve learned on this little painting and, I hope, apply it on the larger one. Look for it here over the next weeks.

For those interested in the “how-to” this is what I did today... I painted the backs and rumps of the sheep by painting either the grass or the dark bits of the sheep body behind them. This is called negative painting... There are a few terms that I use in my posts that require definition. “Negative painting” is one of them. And no, it does NOT mean painting with a bad attitude. I had a hard time with this concept (maybe just me?). It’s as simple as this: the leaves on the left are positive and those on the right are negative. I painted the left leaves positively. Those on the right I painted around and I defined them by what I left white. We end up painting around lots of things to make them show up. Today I painted around grass and around sheep. I also dry brushed (dry paint onto dry paper) some grass areas in front of the sheep. And, that’s a wrap... I'll be sure to post the absolute final painting... but now I must get back to trees.

2 comments:

  1. You're so talented Mom! I'm really proud of you for not letting go of your dreams. You used to tell me you wanted to be an artist when you grew up and now you are!!

    Luv u!

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