My painting plans this week have been dictated to and not by me and I have not completed what I had in mind but was compelled to keep up with nature starting with buying a bunch of Peonies that were advertised on a florist sign in Adelaide last Friday.
In fact when I went in to make the purchase they had sold out but said there was one more bunch coming in on Saturday. I arranged for them to be collected for me as I would not be back in town until Sunday. To my surprise they were not the variety I had always planned on painting, you know those lovely tight knit pink type that might last for some time.When I got home I googled Peonies to find these are a variety of Tree Peony. They are a very open bloom, paper thin, and over the next few days so very very quickly started to wither and fall apart. My bunch was not a inexpensive purchase so my challenge was to capture them before it was too late.
My painting process:
This is a photo of the bunch taken today so you can see from my paintings how I just use the blooms as a reference but compose and paint in a free and intuitive fashion and see where it takes me. In fact only the second one had the merest pencil lines as a guide for the more closed blooms but I prefer to not be restricted by drawing so that I can be free and expressive and not think I have to stay inside the lines. This obviously can end up in a disappointing result but more often gives me the unique expressive impression that I am after and I guess you can call it experimental. I cannot believe that as a person that has lived her entire adult life in control as a neat and exacting person has now come to prefer- not neat, not exact, not in control
let the water and pigment do the controlling- so much more fun!
I hope you enjoy these three experiments and you choose a favorite
In fact when I went in to make the purchase they had sold out but said there was one more bunch coming in on Saturday. I arranged for them to be collected for me as I would not be back in town until Sunday. To my surprise they were not the variety I had always planned on painting, you know those lovely tight knit pink type that might last for some time.When I got home I googled Peonies to find these are a variety of Tree Peony. They are a very open bloom, paper thin, and over the next few days so very very quickly started to wither and fall apart. My bunch was not a inexpensive purchase so my challenge was to capture them before it was too late.
My painting process:
This is a photo of the bunch taken today so you can see from my paintings how I just use the blooms as a reference but compose and paint in a free and intuitive fashion and see where it takes me. In fact only the second one had the merest pencil lines as a guide for the more closed blooms but I prefer to not be restricted by drawing so that I can be free and expressive and not think I have to stay inside the lines. This obviously can end up in a disappointing result but more often gives me the unique expressive impression that I am after and I guess you can call it experimental. I cannot believe that as a person that has lived her entire adult life in control as a neat and exacting person has now come to prefer- not neat, not exact, not in control
let the water and pigment do the controlling- so much more fun!
I hope you enjoy these three experiments and you choose a favorite
These are gorgeous Lorraine. All three of them with their beautiful individual characterstics.
ReplyDeletePainting in the moment is hard due to time constraints but it is so exciting as we have to rely on instinct a lot of the time. Your instincts are certainly working wonders.
Thanks for popping by and leaving your encouragement Laura
ReplyDelete