I know this sketch looks sloppy and crazy but let me explain! Mondays are sort of lost days for me. I do "office" work but mostly, I am off my game. This Monday was no exception and I was sort of lamenting the fact that I don't just sit down and "make art." There is always so much planning and involvement that it takes me several days to work up to starting a painting. Anyhow, I had just driven back from the post office and it was raining still. As I drove through a freak patch of scary fog, I rolled in to town and came upon the Cal Fire group who were doing some burning by the golf course. They burn down the weeds and such every year near the golf course and also near a housing development called Gold Creek. As I drove by, I was taken with the contrast of their(Cal Fire) orange and yellow fire jumpsuits and all of the other muted grays and yellows and greens form the surrounding brush and ensuing smoke from the fires. I went home and just jotted down my impressions real quick. I went back and they were still there but I really couldn't park close enough without alerting them to the fact that I was going to take their pictures and stand close to their trucks. I didn't think that would work.
So, I am not an abstract painter in a way that I would think of abstract painting but it feels like there is an idea here somehow.
Sketching, Painting:
In other news, I have started a new painting. It seems fairly straightforward but sometimes those are the ones that bite you in the rear. I also went for my walk yesterday and was thinking about all of the different shapes that appear in nature just kind of naturally (ha! ha!). And also how shapes join together to create larger shapes. Sketching the landscape (or figure I guess) can get reduced down to some easy starting points when you consider shapes only as opposed to worrying about smaller details like leaves and branches. If you can place the different shapes on your page in good proportion to one another, you can then think about adding details and refining the sketch. I was also looking at the shapes and contours of the land yesterday and how they all fit together like a puzzle. I like this photo above for an example of that idea.
OK, off to get started. Let me know what you are up to if you can.
Libby
I don't think any of us work the way we do by accident. We've been hardwired this way for a very long time--maybe from sometime in Kindergarten or about then. We are who we are--like it or not!
ReplyDeleteI think you making a sketch to remember the colors is an excellent idea! I have been so impressed (and aware) in the last couple of years of how grays can be used to showcase the other, brighter colors. It's a good combination.
ReplyDeleteBeing aware of the shapes you see, long before you jot them down in anyway, is a big deal, compositionally speaking. You can really find some shapes that mesh in just a certain way, like in your pic, that make for a better composition than if you had just randomly drawn or painted a scene. But noticing those shapes to begin with, is the key to getting a nice flow across the canvas or page down the line. :)
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