"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.