A studied approach

Some years ago, a work buddy whose birthday is one day different from mine brought me a beautiful silk stole from Hong Kong. I had no immediate occasion on which to wear it, but I knew immediately that I would love painting it.

I'd recently had my personal critique at the local art school and thought I'd act on one of the casual recommendations the artist-instructor had made. In answer to his question about the kind of planning I did before I started to paint, I'd said that I played with different thumbnail formats.  "Fine," he said, "but that's just a start.  Then, do lots of small-scale studies and try out different colours and compositions."  When I asked how many studies he usually did, this painter of 20-foot-long abstract paintings said, "Oh, up to 16 sometimes." Gulp. I had no intention of doing 16, but I thought I'd give the studies a serious try.

The stole is a soft dove grey, with a small black-flecked overall pattern and accents of black Chinese characters and larger red Chinese symbols, a black border and "frog" closures. All that was needed in addition, I thought, was a single pomegranate.

And so I set to work, first making six small thumbnail sketchesn (shown above) as preliminaries to 8" x 10" studies. Here's the first study, trying out an overall blue tone:

Hmmmm. I could see that the Chinese characters and symbols, while enticing, could become just too much of a good thing. With Study Two, I reined in the fabric's pattern and tried a greenish colour to complement the red pomegranate.

No! Didn't like it at all. So with Study Three, I went back to the blue and thought I'd try a mirrrored duet of the pomegranate and a circular symbol.

Not a good idea. So I tried a fourth version, again rearranging the folds of the stole and the placements of the pomegranate, the border and the frogs.

At this point, I had two huge revelations: (1) Enough of the blue:-- I liked the actual colours of the stole and wanted to try working engagingly with grey and black. (2) I was working too close -- the effects I wanted might be better realized if I stood back to include more of the stole and its interaction with the flat background.

Oh, yes, another realization: I was becoming heartily sick of this study business, dangerously close to being bored with the whole thing. Four studies were more than enough -- certainly enough to demonstrate that this wasn't a working method I could see myself ever repeating again.

I took a deep breath, prepared my good paper, and came up with the best-yet placement of the fabric, folds and pomegranate. Here's the finale, "A Gift from Candice," copyright 2005.

What's more, unable to let go of that luscious pomegranate, I made a very quick small painting -- no preliminary study! -- that's still one of my favourites: "Pomegranate Float," copyright 2005.

Streetview: Good colour theory or plain poor taste?

When we moved to our new digs last year, among the first things we had to get used to were the, um, distinctive accent colours on the white house directly across the street. During our first weeks, I'd imagine what colours I'd prefer to see as I looked out our front window. A pale olive with cream trim, maybe? Or a buttery tan with light olive trim? Or if it had to be blue, a subtle slate blue with a deft touch of black around white woodwork?

Blue is my favourite colour, and purple is one of its natural companions in a so-called analagous colour scheme (one based on adjacent colours in the traditional colour wheel). Recently, in planning a new painting, I found myself testing a mix of these very two colours -- "Cerulean Blue" and "Prism Violet," in the terminology of Liquitex®, my preferred brand of acrylics.

But on their own, this blue is just too blue for a house, and the purple too purple for just about anything.

It's a curious thing that every time I've tried to view our own house in Google's Streetview, the viewing window refuses to travel our block. No matter the direction from which I navigate, as soon as either corner of the block is reached, the scene immediately snaps to either the alley north of us or the alley south of the white house. Maybe these colours are the reason why.