Friday, July 11, 2008

and now ...

for something completely different, it's ...
(11x15)

a somewhat complicated, prepatory drawing.
As we were pulling out of Captian Pip's, a great spot at the foot of the Seven-Mile Bridge, at the end of our Keys vacation in January, I took a photo of some orange, bird-of-paradise-like flower surrounded by wonderful big flat waxy leaves. There are great reflections of the sky on the leaves: I hope I can "get" them.
It probably would be best to use some kind of miskit to block out those areas, and the spines of the leaves, which are lighter. But I don't have any, so I'll have to figure out another way.
Perhaps I'll do what (I think) Sargent did: paint the light areas then rub clear wax over them to form a resist before adding darks.
The problem makes me think of a scene I did looking out a restaurant in Puerto Rico--about ten years ago mi amiga Sue won a weeklong trip to Puerto Rico for the Pablo Casals festival and took me along; muy gracias para todos!--a large swath of the highly polished dark wood door looked blue where the sky was reflected in it. I thought, How will I ever paint that. But I turned off my logic and just painted what I saw: blue door. I was pleased with the result. (See, Sue, I can say something nice about one of my own!)
Hopefully I'll be able to start painting this tomorrow.
Posted by Picasa

2 comments:

Cathy Gatland said...

Wow - this does seem completely different for you - looks like quite a challenge, and interesting to see it as a WIP...

William Evertson said...

Sometimes something as simple as as a crayola can provide the resist. Yes - turn off that logic - let some chance in. Best