Heat

This post is all about how one painting can inform another version in a different medium and in turn inform the original. The small, mostly watercolour painting (below) happened when I became frustrated with a larger version of the same subject I was working on in acrylic, last month. 

 

Heat

10" x 8" - mixed media on paper framed
This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

When I started the acrylic, I wanted to suggest heat and the tropics where these wonderful symbols of sunshine grow so I chose a hot palette of magenta, orange, yellow, red, yellow greens and some turquoise. I wanted to juxtapose and layer these hues and push their saturation levels and values up and down the scale. And of course I wanted to keep it loose and painterly and not refine my brush strokes and paint individual fronds, which I have done in the past! When I stopped working on this painting it looked like this and it wasn't what I wanted at all. What to do - walk away!

I began this week with some watercolour play painting and thought I would try the same subject using a mix of media. Knowing that water media seems to lend itself better to certain techniques and ways of working, I was finally able to achieve a level of expression and spontaneity in the small painting on paper (called Heat, above) that I felt was missing in the acrylic. After completing the watercolour I went back to the acrylic painting and tried not to hold back. It went through various stages with the change and addition of colour and lines, paint and ink......

when I stopped yesterday it looked like this...more to do but I am happier and feel that I can complete the work successfully over the next week.

 

And one more note about the watercolour painting - it is framed with a white mat board and a simple white wood frame - and it looks great on both a white wall or a coloured one, like this.....