Wednesday 27 April 2016

100 Day Project - #99 - CURLY LETTUCE

#99 of 100 Day Project
LETTUCE
6" x 6" Canvas Card



To the outsider it probably looks like I'm reinventing myself, but it's really a return to my roots. I used to love to draw. Some of my happiest memories involve sitting with my mother and watching her draw freehand. As I was growing up I loved any class that involved creating maps or diagrams. I fear many young people today have lost the knack because copying from the internet takes just a few clicks and it's pasted into your essay. However, I believe that knowing how to draw is the foundation of art.

So I want to get back to basics.

I was looking at the work of a top selling artist in the area; I would say her style could be called modern naive. She creates painting after painting in many sizes with two cookie cutter motifs, stylized ragged trees and square rigged sailing ships. Another lady that does abstracts, has a lot of seemingly thin squiggly line. Yet more top artists in the valley surround everything in black line. These are all techniques based in illustration and drawing.

The drawing above went through many stages until I was happy with the result. I have to admit that I'm besotted with color and it's almost impossible for me to stick to black and white. Greens are very difficult to make convincing and there were some beautiful tones in the lettuce I was painting. At first I started with a very thin black line, then I added some thicker black line which gave the painting the effect of stained glass. Then I added a bit of color, light, dark and mid values.

Then I assessed. I didn't like the cloisonne effect which was dominating the rest. So I took out my favourite liner, a GOLDEN HIGH FLOW in Teal with a fine metal tip. (Love the paint - hate the scratchy and easy to plug tip.) I started to add the beautiful teal color over the thick black line, and that was it, Voila! I love the shiny quality of that teal paint when it dries.

This artwork is too busy to convert to a larger painting and on another day I would simplify, but framed with a large mat it would look amazing.

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All work by Sea Dean protected by International Copyright - No printing, copying, electronic transfer or any form of duplication allowed without written permission from the Artist.