Flight 16" X 24" Fluid Acrylic

Flight by April M Rimpo

Flight

Fluid Acrylic

16" X 24"

Having completed several urban scene paintings recently I was in need of a looser, more interpretive painting. Flight is the result. I did start with some of my reference photos, but they served as a jumping off point. They provided the overall flow of the image, but I chose one of my favorite color schemes for the painting, not worrying about the reference colors.  I also wanted a good value plan, providing and interesting pattern of lights and darks. Below is an image of the painting in black and white, letting you see the values more easily.

Using black & white images to check your values

Although I started with a value plan I take photographs of my art each day as I work on a painting. To check the values I open the photo in Photoshop® and use "Desaturate" to turn the image into black and white (as shown at left). This way I can make sure I am achieving the light and dark values that I desire. 

The darks and lights help move your eye through the painting and add a great deal of energy to the finished piece.

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Copyright April M Rimpo 2016 All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

January 2015 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

Color Swatches 

Frequently art challenges are organized that encourage artists to create a painting a day.  Normally my paintings take much longer than this, but the point is to get 2015 started with a flurry of new work.  I decided I'd experiment with some new ideas so by the end of the month I could decided if I wanted to explore it more in more complex work.  This challenge was organized by Leslie Saeta. I'll include a link to her blog where you can see the paintings of all the artists who are participating. I received an email from Leslie this morning and apparently there are 810 people participating in the challenge. 

I have done a lot of research and worked out the color schemes for my work and prepared 8" X 8" gallery wrapped paper "canvases" so I am ready to go on January 1st. You can see some of the color scheme in the swatches I assembled in the photograph at right.

I'm not going to share the concept but will tell you that as you follow along there might be some surprises along the way.  I hope you enjoy the journey that begins tomorrow.

Hiding, 22" X 11" watercolor & fluid acrylic

Hiding by April M. Rimpo

This painting  makes you spend some time searching for the lead character.  Enjoy the abstract and see what you find. While you do that, let me tell you about the color scheme and technique I used.

Below is the color scheme I chose for the painting. This is a tetrad, which is a combination of four colors.  In this case, it consists of two sets of complementary colors. My goal is for the predominantly golden/tan tetrad with purple and cerulean/pthalo blue complements to make the foliage an interesting abstract.  I included some greens which were created by combining the blue with the yellow and golden pigments.  I find pthalo blue creates beautiful greens when combined with nearly any yellow pigment.  By using the same pigments, the green shades are cohesive with the other colors.

I used my favorite site, colorschemedesigner.com, to select the tetrad.  This site is free and is a wonderful resource for playing with colors before beginning a painting.  Once I've selected the colors I then select my watercolor and acrylic pigments and often do some color swatches to ensure the pigments play well together without creating muddy colors.

Since yellow and purple can easily lead to mud I decided to use fluid acrylic for most of this painting allowing the yellow to dry before coming back in with purple.  Since acrylic doesn't change after drying, these colors can be used during separate painting sessions without them blending together.  I used watercolor with the acrylic to add color shifts that I couldn't achieve with the more limited set of acrylic colors I selected.

OK have you found my hidden star?  He is using his camouflage to hide in the foliage yet he has a great view of the world around him.  I wanted this painting to emphasize the concept of hiding since this critter loves to hide.  I abstracted the foliage enough to make it readable as foliage without details that would make you focus on any one part of the foliage.  The only part that is detailed is my mystery star, but he is camouflaged in the ground cover and partially hidden behind the plants above him. 

Have you found the cat?  By shifting the color of the cat to include non-standard purples the camouflage is enhanced. The same purple is used with varying color shifts in all the shadows throughout the painting.   Let me know if you found the cat before I told you.