I have been keeping you abreast of my painting of a flowering cactus with a single flower. It has turned out to be something much, MUCH more difficult than my first paintng that had three flowers on much fewer cactus flutes. In fact, on this painting, I wrote down everything I did thinking that it would be the perfect painting to offer for teaching at the 2014 Las Vegas Painting Convention. There, however, is simply no way this could be taught in anything less than 8 hours and I doubt that people would want to spend that much time on a cactus or take a class from a newbie instructor. Its one thing to paint a simple flower (little do they know) on a simple black background in four or less hours and another to fill the painting with cactus as I have here.
This is Thursday's result with, finally, the flower painted in. Basically I am very happy with the painting. In fact, the suggestion that I give more color to the flower, something that actually does occur in nature, gave the painting much more life. Did it add sparkle? That is up for you to decide.
As I continue to study it though, I realized that I had forgotten the spiny needles and that maybe I needed to tone down the edges, especially on the right side flutes. Yet, it has a very harmonious feeling to it and all of the colors, reds, oranges, pinks, blues, greens have been placed all around the painting giving it a cohesive whole. I don't know. Do I spend more time refining it, because at a decent distance it could be mistaken for a photo or leave it alone? That really is the question.
No comments:
Post a Comment