It was just a quick drawing: the table at the cafe up on the mountain should really have been an ideal spot for looking at the landscape. The view was of the city spread out below, and the bay beyond it, but in front of me I saw a possible design: a woman and a plant. I ignored the view, the plates, the food, the glasses and did a quick sketch.
Once scanned into the computer I could start work. First moving the elements around a bit for a more satisfying composition. In my head I thought of this design as working towards The red tablecloth.
I blocked out the areas of colour. Dark to begin, to give a sense of substance before I actually allocate value to the colour. Sometimes I seem just to know what I want to use where; but in this case, maybe because the drawing was quickly snatched so as not to be noticed and quizzed I had not thought much at the time about what I would do.Also, the figure needed a couple of tweaks: her right hand had been attractive there when I saw it first, but now it flapped somewhat. A string of beads which would echo the red of the small flowers was needed. And hair can be a pain in the colour balance! So headgear is a great solution.
She needed a support for her elbow. There had been chairs nearby, so I drew one in. Chairs are very much part of my memories of cafes, and so thoughts of the tablecloth were fading as this new prop arrived.
I very much liked the green. It was the green of the leaves in reality. But it was too much on the figure. I decided to keep it key, but low key, and that's when the chair came into its own. The piece was now The green chair.
All the backgrounds used to 'colour in' the areas are from my files: the blue, the flower pot, flowers, and beads, and the greens are all from scans of soft pastel work I have done in the past. The clothing is from a photograph I took years ago of an old textile, and the table is from a photograph I took of an ancient fresco.
She needed a support for her elbow. There had been chairs nearby, so I drew one in. Chairs are very much part of my memories of cafes, and so thoughts of the tablecloth were fading as this new prop arrived.
I very much liked the green. It was the green of the leaves in reality. But it was too much on the figure. I decided to keep it key, but low key, and that's when the chair came into its own. The piece was now The green chair.
All the backgrounds used to 'colour in' the areas are from my files: the blue, the flower pot, flowers, and beads, and the greens are all from scans of soft pastel work I have done in the past. The clothing is from a photograph I took years ago of an old textile, and the table is from a photograph I took of an ancient fresco.The size is just under A4, and the design was derived very quickly in order to have something appropriately small to stitch while visiting my mother in hospital a couple of months ago.
4 comments:
This is fabulous! I loved seeing how you chose each color and how it changed the look so much. What program are you using? Is it PS Elements?
Hello Norma, thanks for your comments. The program I use is Corel Painter 11.
love the spontaneity in the decision making process...but I guess artistry really could not survive without it.
Karen, I think that we all know what we don't like or want. It's knowing why, and then how to make what we do like that's the trick. I suspect that it comes from looking better, and then having the right in-brain connections which solve the problems.
Putting it all together in a blog post makes it look quick and easy, and sometimes it is just like that. At other times, however, years can go by before it all clicks - and sometimes never. It's all fun along the way, though, and I guess we learn from our frustrations as well.
Post a Comment