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I must admit I had to work a little over my 20 minutes with this one because of so many layering and lot of drying (for paint to dry!). I feel like this one is a little "odd" - I started with the dark patterned background and knew that I needed to paint over a lot of it to keep it from getting overly busy. The pattern itself is real pretty but because of the darkness and bright colors, it's very "eye-catching."
So I started working through some painting elements and colors. I knew I wanted to try the circle idea and blocking out sections of the background. Towards the end though, it started looking like 4-5 big blobs like a "figure" and just didn't like that. So breaking up the circle shapes was crucial as well as experimenting with the tape. I had to move things around quite a bit because it was still looking like "arms." Then . . . I flip it around (I will write a post coming soon about importance of rotating your canvas or whatever!!). And voila! Definitely preferred the landscape version.
Again tape is adding some weird element to me. It's a forced element something I don't have that much control over. It's a fantastic exercise to "make it work" with the geometric fixed shape, deeling with what's below when you peel it up to reveal that rectangle and then where you put the tape because it has all these other elements confined in that space. It's really fun. So had to take a little bit more time to figure out what was working for me.
The weird thing about this idea is that you need to keep the viewer's "interest," but also feel like it's "ok" for you. If you absolutely hate it then by all means, paint over or whatever. But there's this space between feeling uncomfortable and "ok" with what's happening visually that adds interest without being too "off." there are no rules of course in this way. But sometimes you want symmetry, my work is always asymmetrical. But there is a sense of "balance" but not too much. There's space for the eye and more complicated areas. As you get better at painting and balancing these elements you start to understand what is working for you. It's the "gray" area that's hard to explain.
For example, anyone can make chocolate chip cookies right? But one of my best friends when she makes them, they are just . . . .SOOOOOO GOOOD! Delicious! beyond The little nuances that she has developed in her process when making them start to be intuitive and they are hard to explain or write down step-by-step. It's just her style of cooking and the process when making her cookies - she may feel the oven should be at 365 rather than 350. That she cook for 11 minutes instead of 10. That she only beats in the wet ingredients to the dry 44 strokes with her wooden spoon, or that she uses extra vanilla, the dark brown sugar instead of just brown, and the real high quality chips like Ghirardelli's or something etc. But it's the way in which she combines all those little things into her process that makes her cookies special verses mine. Mine are ALWAYS flat as pancakes. I don't get it! But I probably should experiment and test more like my friend to discover the little things that make it work for me.
Painting is all about this process. And so many people (especially newbies getting started) fret and stress out over the END result of what the painting should look like. It's just like life or like anything, you miss what's on the way!