"Patching Things Up #5" acrylic/mixed on paper It's been a busy year (and it's only April!). I've been steadily painting, teaching, and volunteering, so blogging hasn't been a priority. But I'm excited about a new painting in my "Patching Things Up" series, and I wanted to share how this particular piece (#5 in the series) came together.
I took pictures after each step (see gallery below) to document the process.
As is typical in my work, I began with an old, failed watercolor painting. Originally, I wanted to depict a person's feet in shallow water, but I wasn't happy with the awkward shape of the feet, and ended up marbling over the piece (that webbed look comes from dropping a dispersant in the marble bath). The painting sat dormant for year until I decided to superimpose on it my drawing of two women. I like how their bodies overlap slightly (like a Venn diagram). Once I started putting in my dark values, I began to see this piece take shape. I added my own collage paper (dark blue) to the dress of the foreground figure, and then used white to provide some calm, non-patterned shapes. I'm most pleased with that blast of red in the background figure--leaving no doubt about where my focal point is! As for the title/concept, it's a play on words--I've literally "patched things up" by fixing a failed painting, but, read a different way, life is about patching things up with our friends and loved ones.
I took pictures after each step (see gallery below) to document the process.
As is typical in my work, I began with an old, failed watercolor painting. Originally, I wanted to depict a person's feet in shallow water, but I wasn't happy with the awkward shape of the feet, and ended up marbling over the piece (that webbed look comes from dropping a dispersant in the marble bath). The painting sat dormant for year until I decided to superimpose on it my drawing of two women. I like how their bodies overlap slightly (like a Venn diagram). Once I started putting in my dark values, I began to see this piece take shape. I added my own collage paper (dark blue) to the dress of the foreground figure, and then used white to provide some calm, non-patterned shapes. I'm most pleased with that blast of red in the background figure--leaving no doubt about where my focal point is! As for the title/concept, it's a play on words--I've literally "patched things up" by fixing a failed painting, but, read a different way, life is about patching things up with our friends and loved ones.
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