Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Black Eyed Susan

Here's the water color painting I've been wanting to do for some time. I don't mean this subject, I just mean A watercolor painting! This bares some similarity to the post below in that this is the first time I've used water colors in over 4 years, so I'm not terribly confident with the media, but I just went for it. I'm pretty happy with the results... Of course water color is just about the least forgiving of the painting medias, so certainly there are a few things I don't love about this. First off, the stems of the flowers got way too thick and would have benefited from being more delicate. I also think I her hands lack grace. Next time I'll get it right! This was just an experiment after all!

Things I DO like about it:
1. Watercolor is such a loose medium! Even the tight lines I made did their own thing. (Her lips started bleeding, for instance). This adds a lot of character that a digital painting would never have.
2. I love the source material I got this dress from... those lines on the skirt are just perfect for this application. The dress from a book called "Vintage Fashion" and was designed by Texan Tom Brigance in 1952.
3. The use of white space and using the paper as a color.
Also, perhaps this will be interesting, but everything about this piece was planned before I began painting. I made a quick color study in Photoshop so that I wouldn't make any foolish choices when it came to the final. I'm REALLY happy I did this because I changed a few things around getting to this particular color combination.

3 comments:

Michael Coates said...

I LOVE this!

Rosie said...

I like this piece a lot! I really like the decision to not outline the smoke and the color change of the dress that the smoke makes. The facial expression is very appealing too!

Adam Osgood said...

Thanks!

Rosie: I love when other artists suggest lines without actually drawing them, and I'd really like to start doing this more.