A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 5

Connecting the Reds

Figuring out how I was going to connect the red grids took some time. As I mentioned previously, I printed off the image and used that to experiment with some ideas. I decided that subtle or allusive circles/globes would do the trick. An odd number, which is always the best choice in a composition, of five circles were drawn on the dry painting with a pastel pencil. Slowly I began introducing the circles and I liked the effect!

This entire painting taught me a lot about values with the red color. As I painted the circles, I was careful to not let the round shape take dominance but for the viewer to "find" them and perhaps as they look at the painting they will find more circles in the background?

A title for this painting is dumb founding me. Not sure what it should be. Usually I have a title by this time in the painting process. Any ideas?

How do you like the addition of the allusive circles?

...to be continued.

A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 4

Finally, ideas for my next painting moves alighted! As you can see, I decided to paint in 16 more rectangles of reds into the one grid area. Because these were so small, I used a brush instead of a palette knife, but I still used mixtures of reds and made sure no two were alike or next to each other. Try doing that....it is a bit of challenge.

I decided I needed to start changing some of the values of the rectangles to guide the eye toward my area of interest (the 16 small reds). Some were darkened, others were painted lighter values. Warms and cools were used as well. I had to make sure the corners were are somewhat different.

Though I was liking the all of the reds, unfortunately you cannot see the various textures in this digital image, I was still puzzled as to how I was going to make the painting flow or "hang' together and not be so static. Someone suggested that it was already complete or done, but I was not satisfied. I printed off the image, in color and in black and white, and started drawing on these to generate some ideas. Would I paint on top of the grid? Use stripes/lines or circles? I was stumped.

What would you do?

...to be continued.

A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 3

What's next? So many decisions ahead!

When I began this painting, I did not have a "plan" or even a vision. I knew I wanted to paint all this lovely red on its perceptural opposite - green. Intuitively, I decided to leave this one rectangle unpainted and I turned the painting around - perhaps you noticed this. It took a few days to ponder this stage, so I went and worked on some other paintings, which is also new behavior for me. The problem to solve: I have all of this yummy color but it is relatively random and a bit static. How am I going to get the viewer to look around the painting and to move toward my area of interest? The solution was slow in coming as I tweeked a little here and there, which you will see in the next post.

What would you have done at this stage? What questions would you have had?

...to be continued.

A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 2

Applied paint with a palette knife

It is time for the RED!

For this red painting, I decided I wanted to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the red hue family of colors from pink/warm purples to oranges and use almost the full range of values. Tubes of paint that fit this description were made readily available along with white. I started mixing, though I was careful not to mix the paints thoroughly because I wanted the variety of reds to show in each grid and streaks were okay. A palette knife is all that I used at this stage. [By the way, I paint with water soluble oil paints.]

The grid was just a guideline and I did not obsess on perfectly straight edges nor did I care if I crossed a line because I wanted some organic feelings in the painting. Strategically, I did not want two rectangles next to each other to be the same hue nor the same value; this was not always easy to execute. This turned out to be a great exercise about values. You can see that I worked all over the board.

Question: Will I fill in ALL of grid?

...to be continued.

A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 1

First layer of paint.

What are perceptual opposites?

First let me explain that the inspiration for this painting is two fold. In my last blog of "Curly, a Paso Fino," you can see that the underpainting was several colors of red. I liked the result so much that I decided that I wanted to paint a predominantly red painting at a later time. Then a couple of months ago I decided to pursue a different artistic language which has lead me to start painting abstracts. This in turn has encouraged me to paint my abstracts using my knowledge of color.

A perceptual opposite is a visual phenomenon that we have all experienced. Have you ever stared at something with a predominant color for a while and when you looked away you suddenly saw a glare of another color? For example if you look at the yellow sun for any length of time and look away, you will see a bluish-purple color bounce in your eyes. Perceptual colors can be seen more directly by getting a mid-gray piece of paper (8x11) and then laying a solid 2"x3" piece of color on top of it. Stare at the color for a minute, then remove it and you will see its perceptual opposite on the gray paper. Artists use these in their paintings, though complementary colors are more commonly known.

Since I wanted to paint a grid of reds, I painted the perceptual opposite - a lime green - of the dominant red I was using as the underpainting. The painting surface is a 24x30 board that was gessoed. I mixed up a bunch of green paint, put blobs of it on the board and then used a squeegee to achieve a thin even coat of green over the entire surface. After it dried, I then drew my grid with a pastel pencil. Acrylics were used in this first  layer.
 
Feel free to ask me any questions about my process.

...to be continued.