Tuesday, May 20, 2008

"Orange Reflection," 6x8, oil on canvas board

Connie Kleinjans fine artI'm still playing with the reflections. It's an interesting challenge. Now, I have a lot of colors of construction paper, and when I create my setup, I often use sheets of it behind or underneath the item. In this case I used a sheet of aqua paper behind the orange and ultramarine paper under it beneath a sheet of glass. The reason I'm explaining this is that the backdrop sheet reflects in the glass and the colors go catawhumpus. It can make your eyes go wacky trying to figure out what the colors are, not to say values (as I mentioned in an earlier post). I have one of those neutral gray viewfinders with the slider that lets you change the aspect ratio. The viewfinder also has a couple of holes, and you can look at colors (or values) through them. This has proven very helpful.

Another funny thing I noticed about this piece is that the size of the items painted makes it look like this might be a much larger work. I think that in the smaller works we tend to do close-ups; it gives the work more punch. This works well in something small, but might be too much in something big. Depends. Many artists have made it work.

One thing I'm pleased with here, though, is that I let the orange underpainting show through more than I usually do. I like doing that, but often go overboard on covering the canvas. When I do that, another favorite tool is my little pencil squeegee.

1 comment:

  1. Connie, I have really enjoyed browsing your blog and reading your thoughtful comments on color, value and composition. This painting is outstanding and has one of my very favorite color combos. Orange and blue. Letting the underpainting show through is one of the best ways to vibrate color in a painting. It's amazing how less is more in painting, as in other things.
    Well, except packing ;)

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