...the biggest painting I've done...
Okay, so 15x30 inches is not a really big painting, but when you are usually working on envelopes, it's big to me. A friend of mine, Christy Bryant, saw some Pomegranates that I did on an envelope. She asked if I could do a painting on canvas for her. Who could say no? It was enjoyable to paint and fun to see it morph a few times. I love the challenge of the random wish list she gave me. Besides the Pomegranate's, she wanted the colors gray and red...with silver as the metallic. You know how this starts...with a little sketch...
Looks pretty boring huh?
I started painting the Pomegranate's first. They got yellow first, then some shades of orange. I thought making the background slanted would give it movement or flow, but it'll end up changing.
I forgot to mention that I am using acrylic paint so far. To add the shadows on the Pomegranate's, I'm using water soluble oil pastels. For the shadows cast by the Pom's are Inktense pencils. They are also a water soluble product.
I've added some blue...not quite a shadow...it's just some artsy fartsy stuff! I also played up the shine or highlights on the Pom's. The cast shadow also has a reflection of the Pom color.
This is the finished painting. A lot of changes has been made since the above pic. I ended up using shades of gray in some texture medium to scrape vertical, instead of the slant it was on.
A lot of my art friends liked the background. How I did it, was to turn the painting upside down. I scribbled with Inktense around the Pom's. Quite darkly, in fact. Then with a brush loaded with water, I dabbed at the scribbling and let it drip down. When it was dry, I used an opaque white pen to outline some of the drip marks. To play up the gray and give it more depth, I rub in some black oil pastel randomly. One of the last things I added was the silver leaf. Which, in my friend's pic, is better captured...
To add those, I took some Decoupage and swiped it from Pom's to the top, with a card. I took little pieces of silver leaf and stuck it to the Decoupage. With the same card and a bit more Decoupage, I swiped over it to seal it in. When everything is dry, a clear coat keeps everything in place!
*I hope ya'll don't mind. I wanted to tell you about a friend of mine. She was one of the people that help fill a request of mine, to send my sister in law some mail art while she was going through chemo. My friend, Harriet aka Acalla, is in a similar situation. Her sister in law is facing huge medical bills. They have started a funding drive which you can read more about at this link: Help Mrs. Peggy Fodge If you can help, great! If you can't, thanks for checking it out anyways. <3
