Wednesday, April 16, 2014

April is the cruelest month.....


I just looked that up.  I would have guessed Shakespeare, but it is the opening line of "The Waste Land," by T.S. Elliott.

It's certainly true in Ohio.  I'm sure you've noticed that I've been whining about the winter weather--it's been unusually cold here for months.  It was just starting to get warm, and everything was starting to bloom, when bam! We were hit by a couple of below freezing days and a snow.

I had big plans to paint my neighbors magnolia tree, but the blooms have already turned brown from the freezing temperatures.

Instead, here's a semi-abstracted painting of daffodils and hyacinth (almost all bending down to the ground because of the freeze).  It's on a full sheet of Fabriano 300 lb rough watercolor paper.  A full sheet measures 32x20 inches.  It's cropped a tad, so the final size framed will be a little smaller.

The palette is:  carbazole violet, quin burnt orange, indigo, phthalo blue red scale, hansa yellow medium, permanent yellow deep, and quin red.  For me, that's a big palette.

I didn't start with any intent (I do try to, but I don't always have a plan...). As I painted, I was trying to go towards a strong diagonal, where as you cross the diagonal, the painting goes from darker to lighter values, and a complicated series of lines to more simple.


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