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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
