The inspiration for this piece came from a British murder-mystery show I discovered on my Netflix account. It is called Rosemary & Thyme and features professional gardeners who are also amateur detectives. If you find inspiration in flowers, the show is a treasure trove!
I saw some very unusual flowers in a vase in the background of a greenhouse scene, and that became a springboard for this artwork. It differs from that scene a great deal, but I find most satisfaction in a piece when I let it show me where it needs to go instead of adhering rigidly to references.
I was using soft pastel on the reverse side of printer paper to make a transfer for adding text to a Mother's Day gift. I started "seeing things" in the mass of blue, so I started playing with it...came up with a nifty little doodle, but it's just on plain, ol' printer paper. Not designed to last...but maybe I can make a print of it at least.
So even though I fight my pack-rat urges in most respects (or I'd have
one of those tragic hoarder-house situations), I MUST keep my drop-out
pieces from cutting mats. This little painting is the reason why; you
never know when you're going to need a bit of matboard ready for when
you want to play with the pastels.
Matted to fit a standard 8" x 10" frame, and available for purchase at my Etsy shop. Don't wanna mess with frame shopping? No worries! I can frame this for you as well...find out more:
I actually thought to get a few work in progress shots on this piece, not many, but a few. I started with a non-objective charcoal drawing on primed foamcore, which I sprayed with alcohol to give a wash effect. When it dried I repeated the process with a brown watercolor crayon and got this underpainting:
Black and brown underpainting
The wash effects can provide an interesting value map to use as a jumping-off point to develop the work. I must say I wasn't particularly excited about this one, so it sat for several weeks.
When I did decide to go back to it, I started blocking in some color in oil pastel. Once I started playing with the oil pastels, I got "in the zone" so I
didn't think to get photos of more steps in the process. I chose the
colors intuitively, building off the brown that had already been
established in the underpainting. I was digging the soothing earth
tones and neutrals, jazzed up with just a hint of green and a very pale
pink to compliment it.
Good stopping point to snap a photo
This seemed like a good stopping point to check how the values (lights and darks) were developing. Squinting can help, but I just use my camera on the black and white setting. Normally I would just view it through the camera screen, but for the sake of blogging I snapped a photo:
Value check
Not too bad! Maybe just unify the lights in the lower left a bit...
Final values
Yep, that's it! So here's the finished oil pastel:
"Cocoon" Oil pastel, 6" x 9"
The finished work is a small, non-objective abstract piece in oil pastel on primed, acid-free foamcore. While I wasn't so gung-ho to work on this one, I'm glad I came back to it; I'm quite happy with how it turned out.
This piece is matted to fit a standard 11" x 14" frame, and is available for purchase from my Etsy shop:
Can something be rustic and modern at the same time? Sure, why not?
"Still Life With Two Pears" Oil, 8" x 10"
"Still Life With Oranges and Flowers" Oil, 10" x 8"
Two recent, small still life works on panel. They ended up with a sort of folk art look to them...so, yeah, contemporary yet folksy-quirky...? Well, here they are, anyway.
Oh, and a close-up of the texture on the second painting below:
Please check out availability of these works and others at my Etsy shop, much thanks!
"Still Life With Yellow Fruit" Oil on paper, 12" x 9"
I've been tinkering with my oils lately; here's a still life on primed paper. I'm happy with how it turned out, however I'm unable to offer the original work for sale, I'm afraid. Silly me, I worked the paper edge-to-edge, and I managed to get oil seeping into the unprimed edge.
Back of the piece, with oil seeping onto the unprimed side of the paper.
Of course I wouldn't have had this problem if I had used Arches Oil Paper...or if I had remembered to tape off the edges. Live and learn.
The good news is, this piece is available as a fine art Giclee reproduction print in a variety of sizes from 10" x 8" all the way up to a whopping 36" x 28"! How did U2 put it? "Even better than the real thing..." Click here to buy a print.
