Painting 8

It's been forever since I've updated my blog, but I've been plugging along in my paintings and will one day meet my goal. Not sure why my blogging has suffered, but I guess I'd blame it on Text Twist which calls for me anytime I'm near a computer.

My life is better since the last time I wrote, I have a new job! I'm very pleased to be working for the American Heart Association. It has everything I yearned for in a job and I'm pleased to go to work every day. After a really awful year, it's going much better for me now.

As for this painting, I downloaded this photo off the computer because I loved the artistic quality and wanted to see if I could capture the soft focus of the background and carefree, random display of tulips. The painting for me was more about the stems than the flowers, and I should have moved the composition up on the canvas because the tulips get more play than I wanted, especially at the top. I put a lot of color in the leaves and stems which don't show up on the computer, and as I look at this painting, I think I could have added more darks in the green recesses, and perhaps varied the color of the red, going lighter as the tulips receded.

I don't have many fans of this painting, and I know the vast area of fuzzy tulips is disruptive, but I found the processes to be quite a learning experience in how I look at things. I found myself unable to follow what I was seeing and had to translate the leaves and stems to my own vision. Something about the repetitiveness and pattern confused my eye and I could not always look from reference to canvas and make a true replica of what I was seeing. I had to rely on my inner eye of how things are supposed to look. I was getting in touch with painting as an art form, not as replicating what I see, but interpreting the subject matter in the way I want it to be. It seems common sense, I strive to be real and I get caught it that trap very easily year, I'm feeling much better with my life.