Copyright April M Rimpo

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Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

Friday, November 15, 2013

"Rhythm" - An Abstract with a theme

Rhythm, 24" X 45" gallery wrapped watercolor
I recently had the challenge of creating a painting for a very dark space in a home with brown carpeting, dark brown stained barn board walls, and no windows.  If you didn’t turn the lights on you couldn’t see well enough to walk across the room.  I felt the painting needed to have a lot of white and bright colors to helps brighten the room.
This room is adjacent to an entertainment room with a bar and is decorated in a musical theme.  Although it's an abstract painting, I wanted there to be some connection to music in the design.  The shapes used in the abstract harken back to musical instruments and notes and sheet music was incorporated as collage elements.

Design and Value Pattern
I started by developing the design on tracing paper, adding white “charcoal” where I wanted to retain the white of the paper and gray shading where I wanted dark black.  This was my value pattern for the abstract.  Since this home is in a wooded area I felt using the colors of Fall would be appropriate to transition between the dark and white areas while provided the color needed to brighten the room.   In other paintings I used a complementary triad of orange, green and purple, so a few spots of purple were scattered about the painting to increase vibrancy.


Here you can see the painting in its new home
If you compare the value pattern shown above with the finished painting, you can see that pattern was a guide that I modified as I developed the painting.  I divided the transition areas between the white and black areas to allow more color variations.  Some white areas were reduced in size and shifted in position to create a more interesting flow and rhythm to the painting.  Lastly, some calligraphic touches of musical notes and symbols were added.


"A Spot of Color", 8" X 10" acrylic on canvas block

A Spot of Color by April M. Rimpo
Every Fall I walk around our neighborhood talking photographs of the trees and the beautiful colors of the fall foliage.  Unfortunately this year there were not many colors to be found.  Apparently the weather conditions weren't conducive to leaf color change, so most leaves had changed directly from green to brown and fallen.  There was one very small tree nestled among the larger ones that had turned red, gold, and orange. The sun lit this tree so it glowed, jumping out from the shadows.

A good friend and I decided to have a paint-in one wet day, so we huddled in her studio and worked on our own creations.  It seemed like a good opportunity for me to work from the photos I had taken of the little tree. I wanted to share the beautiful lights and shadows of that day, so A Spot of Color was born.  This painting is acrylic on a gallery wrapped canvas board.  I plan to include this little painting in an exhibit held each year during the first couple weeks of December at a local art center.  The exhibit is called "Singular Sensations" where local artists can share some lower priced original art to the public. See the variety of art produced in the area is always great fun. 


"A Spot of Color"
by April M Rimpo

8" X 10"

acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

$200 includes shipping and handling within US


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