What Makes A Painting Work Art Blog
In Praise of Experimenting
by art_composition , April 26, 2010—05:52 PM
This account is in praise of experimenting with art, and stumbling into success As an artist it's a way to stretch, learn, and have fun. If you are a collector you may find some very engaging pieces that developed when the artists took a leap outside their usual media and modes of creation.
"Dark Elephant" developed out of an experiment that just kept stretching. I've been doing a fair amount of brush painting on rice paper recently, and I've done a number of pieces on less traditional surfaces such as Bristol paper. I had a piece of handmade rough watercolor paper from India with leaves and stems embedded in it, and I decided to try painting an elephant in sumi-e ink on it.
I knew the paper was very absorbent, but where rice paper will give you blurs and blobs if you paint too slowly or with too heavy a hand, the ink simply registered as very dark on this paper. It was hard to get the range of grays that make ink painting so attractive. Hard! Actually there was no range of grays, although the rough surface did allow a scrumbling effect for lighter areas. Not surprisingly the leaf areas were more resistant to the ink than the pure paper. At that point I had no more than a not very interesting, too dark, elephant painting on a rather interesting paper.
Instead of writing it off as a learning experience, first I thought in terms of picking up more lights one the dark elephant which meant the piece was going to go mixed media. A white oil pastel lightened a few areas such as around the ear, on the tusk, and a forehead wrinkle. A bit of white charcoal picked up the brighter white at the front edge of the ear. Most of the other whites are in the ink scrumbled areas. Better, but not adequate to frame as it was.
I had an 8" by 10" watercolor canvas on which I'd done some experimenting for a large watercolor canvas commission, mostly in shades of red and blue and some transparent brown tones as I worked toward an antiqued effect that the client wanted. Adding greens and affixing the elephant to the surface and bringing more of the blues and browns in finally resulted in an interesting painting of a forest elephant. The gold frame works well with it, bringing out the gold tones in the natural leaves.
Go ahead and bumble on with a project fraught with uncertainties; it can be fun solving the problems that develop and you may get a result that delights you.
COMMENTS
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12/18/2010 * 12:52:56
looks very unusual, but stylish. Ideal for office or personal office. I want it to hung on the wall
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12/15/2010 * 14:03:13
Yet another wonderful case of letting the artwork tell YOU what it wants. Nicely done.
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12/15/2010 * 02:01:29
Dark elephant?? Is it real or just fruit of your creative imagination,? anyway it looks cool
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06/10/2010 * 12:23:24
Did you think about using metallic silver to bring out some highlight? I've used metallic silver when white would not work, and mix it with white.
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06/08/2010 * 09:13:01
I will share my interpretation. I see the elephant as having a mysterious presence in the middle of the surroundings.
Lately I've been experiementing as well with different types of paints used in other ways.
My latest approach is in my gallery The Darker Side of My Soul
I think that you achieved a wonderful mysteriousness with this piece.
04/27/2010 * 12:31:30
the surface uses the pigment as the artist the brush.watching purvis young creat on wood ,metal,and other objects showed his strokes danced with the resistance ,to become permanent.
Caroline Henry ( homepage )
12/27/2010 * 23:17:56
In response to the question from starralex76, Dark Elephant is very much a work of creative imagination. I generally paint from nature, still life set ups, or photographs which I have taken--but sometimes I just dive into the deeper pools of the mind and see what bubbles up.