Thursday, August 20, 2009

Rope and Poster




The poster is on a small 5"x7" canvas board. If you've never tried using a poster study, I highly recommend it. It takes a lot of guesswork out of the process, especially if you don't use a colored underpainting. The rope in the painting (11"x14") isn't quite as dark as it appears here, it's a little closer in value to the poster study. It's just one of those digital camera glitches, every once in a while you come across a set of colors that the camera refuses to see accurately. It'll probably come up lighter when I paint more of the background. Painting the rope is a lot of fun. It's like painting a minituarized version of Van Gogh's hay fields. I've also been thinking about Leonardo's awesome knot mural, that covers an entire ceiling with one strand looped into intricate configurations. The arrangement is inspired by Luis Melendez. I like the way that the objects in his vertical compositions kind of diminish into the background.

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