Sunday, February 08, 2009

True Blue



I stayed up until the wee hours finishing up this new painting. It's a biggie and I'm so happy with how the colors worked out. The composition was working right from the start, but the lines were in red and the other colors were just - so off. My husband took a look at it, with both of our head's cocked to the same side.
ME: I'm liking the composition-
HIM: Yeah.
ME: -but the colors aren't working for me.
HIM: Me neither. I think you need some blues and purples.

I overhauled the palette with a layer of phalo over the whole canvas. That toned things down right away for me and then I got into the line work with black and filling in the other chunks of color with more shades of blue and purple. Then it looked a little too predictable in that all cool palette. Once I introduced the earthier tones I knew I was heading in the right direction.
This painting is available in my Etsy shop for now... www.livefunky.etsy.com.
This is the scale I want to work in for the Gallery Collection and it's also not "ready to hang" like my latest Etsy motto. But I'm impatient and just wanted to share it as soon as I could! I'll be taking this piece off the board and priming a new piece of canvas tonight. I'm still on the fence about what to do with these G.C. paintings - most likely they'll be split between Boundless Gallery and Discovered Artists. We shall see...

3 comments:

T.Allen said...

Beautiful, and I love how the two of you decided on a color revamp. I'm often in my husband's music studio or he in mine doing the same thing!

Kendra Zvonik said...

WOW! Jessica, this painting is fantastic. It is so perfectly realized. Nice work. I think this could be the beginning of a body of work for a show, not online, but in a gallery. I can see this being a highly successful venture.
I really like the addition of the earth tones. I find it really challenging to paint with browns and neutrals.

Anonymous said...

I would have loved to have seen the before and after of True Blue. Love the WOW factor this one has. In fact, I always enjoy your youthful, cheery, drop dead-beautiful colours etc.
Cheers, Sherrill, in Montreal