Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Sophie

The last bits of sky and final glazes were done on Monday, and my work on this painting is finished.

Sophie
42" x 27"     oil on linen     2012

I'd originally thought to have fewer oak leaves, to have more sky, to have some green leaves along the bottom as in the final drawing in the previous post. However, as I added the oak leaves, they seemed to keep calling for more, descending downward and becoming more dense behind the figure ... and not for any narrative reason, but because the painting wanted all the red.

Her blouse changed too. I'd always envisioned the blouse to be grey with a few small dots scattered about as in the drawing, but the dots became too busy against the backdrop of leaves, and the color too heavy, so I went to blue with a simple geometry to the pattern.

1 comment:

  1. This is so beautiful. I love how you incorporated the autumn leaves!

    ReplyDelete

quotes

"There is more power in telling little than in telling all."
- Mark Rothko

“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meanings are unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.”
- Magritte

"Now, the idea is to get everything right -- it's not just color or form or space or line -- it's everything all at once."
- Richard Diebenkorn