New Piece! Sort Of:) Purple Gate Study

The other day it occurred to me that at the rate that I work it's going to take me awhile to gain a lot of insight into my artwork. There is nothing wrong with a gradual unfolding of course and everything comes in due time. However, if you only sketch once in awhile, for example, it may take quite a bit of time to gain proficiency. 

The little sketches with paper that I have been making are one thing I have been doing to try and learn. To step things up though, I started working without a drawing and without much of a plan, save for a color idea and a particular design challenge. I knew that I wanted to reference a purple wrought iron gate that I see on my drive to Linden down the road. I also had the larger aqua piece and so I started with that first. I tried working with three colors. I worked with painted papers from previous projects and tried to assemble enough of a value range. I worked on my ideas regarding proportion, trying to deal with shapes and colors, starting with larger shapes first and working down to details. I also wanted to focus on using both parts of the cut out, both the positive as well as the negative shapes. As I worked the piece, I adjusted the value differences, their locations and tried to balance everything as I went along. I had the most difficulty with the "D" shape in the middle. The original color and value I selected was a dark  orange-yellow brown. The contrast of that value against the white was zippy but it proved to be too zippy in the end.  ("Zippy" is a painterly technical term for way too much of something! You want some zippiness but not too much zippiness.) 

The next challenge for me is going to continue to be working with larger pieces first. I also want to work on the overall orientation of the pieces. I like a sort of rounded feeling to things so we will see what happens:)

OK, enough for now. Back to work! Thanks for reading and commenting.
Libby