Complements

"The Plans I Have For You," 18 x 24 oil on canvas

A lot of artists have a hard time taking compliments.  I know it took me a long time to learn to say "thank you" rather than put myself down.  This post isn't about that, however.  I'm talking colour, not comments!

My palette is usually pretty limited.  Just like I don't wear bright colours, my paintings are generally pretty down to earth....literally.  Every now and then, though, I break out a little - at least for me!

Way back in Grade Nine art class, we learned about complementary colours.  A colour's complement is the one on the opposite side of the colour wheel. Even though I know what is where on the colour wheel, I still keep one tacked behind my easel!  Saves having to think too hard some days!  Then, back in 2009 when I took a workshop with Val Hinz, we did some paintings using complementary colours for the underpainting. For a horse, you have to extrapolate a little, of course:  bay = red, so complement is green;  chestnut = orange, complement is blue, and so on.   I really like the result, and have done a few paintings this way.  This quick study below was one:

"The Yearling" oil on canvas panel, $75.00

Skip forward to August 2013.  While having lunch with my friend and fellow artist/photographer Renee Fukumoto, we decided we needed to do some kind of "challenge."  We settled on using one of her photos of her very handsome Standardbred, Remi.  The photo was absolutely gorgeous.  I decided on my crop, then thought hey, maybe I'll try that old complementary colour underpainting for this.  It was kind of fun posting the crazy in-progress photos on Facebook.  He was my Martian horse for a while!

Of course, the finished result was very different!  While on the one hand I'm disappointed I defaulted to going very realistic, it was, at least, a fresh way of getting there.  The painting is 18 x 24 oil on canvas, and the title I settled on is "The Plans I Have for You."

(Thanks Judy Wood for the gentle smack upside the head on my word usage, haha....I should know better!  And now I will never forget again!  ;-) )

Waxing Artistic

Rubytuzday

It was rather on a whim I decided to take the most recent FASM workshop offering. Encaustics are a medium I knew little about but found intriguing. After seeing some originals in person at the FASM general meeting where the teacher for the workshop, Cora Brittan, gave us a presentation, I thought if I could manage to attend and cover my usual barn work, I would! I even had everything on the materials list, so I didn't have to buy anything.

Simply speaking, encaustic painting is a process that uses wax. Techically what Cora taught us was mixed media, involving everything from drawing, ink, linocut printmaking and collage. I decided to keep it as simple as possible - I'm a painter, so I felt a bit out in left field! Like a good workshop participant, I did a couple of drawings the night before, so I wouldn't spend half the day working on my drawing and not get a chance to actually play with the wax. It's something I always encourage my own workshop participants to do, with varying degrees of success!

Poseidon

I found out, very quickly, that it would take a bit of trial and error to come up with work I was actually happy with, though I will show you what I did anyway. I used a combination of technical pen, coloured pencil and oil pastel for my drawing. The first one, which I've posted at the top, I went back over a second time with the wax - once I had a better idea of how it worked! The photo doesn't show it, but I used some of my very cool Sennelier iridescent oil pastels over top of the wax as well.


At the very least, I had some fun with colour today. The last one I didn't finish, only putting the wax over the drawing I did with the tech pen. You can see I used the same drawing again - all of the colour is from the waxes. Certainly nothing resembling the intricate designs our instructor produces! I believe I will be sticking to oils for the time being, but every now and then it's nice to just play! I kind of felt like I was back in grade school!