Folk Art Mary

Four Children, Balancing out Blues with Yellows

I've added dark outlines and more yellow (in the moon, the inner frame, and the children's clothes) but it still doesn't balance out the brilliance of the blue.

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Four Children, The Shock of Adding Blue

It's about time to add blue, since the sky and the water are a large part of this piece. Adding blue brings a new color to the mix.

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Four Children, Experimenting with Different Colors

In the beginning of a painting, I try different colors as I'm figuring out what will work. Sometimes I'll take a color in one direction and then go back the other way. It's all according to feel.

Below I've put in more reds and greens. Reds in the rock that surround the waterfall. Greens in the trees, the lines in the rock and below the bottom frame of the carving.

 

After looking at it for a while, I decide I've gone too far so I take some of the reds out of the rock and tone down the greens.

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Four Children, First Two Layers of Paint

Writing this blog has forced me to be able to talk about how I paint my art. And having to talk about it,  has effected HOW I paint. Before the blog I didn't always paint a base layer, but now I do. This carving was first painted with the base color green/yellow that's in the frame. For the second coat I painted the interior picture with a little blue and red added to the green/yellow first layer.

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Four Children, Carving Complete

Jumping ahead from the sketch, here's a picture of the finished carving.

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Four Children, Second and Final Sketch

We decided to make this family portrait less square, more of a verticle piece of art. This is the final and approved sketch. The kids are more stretched out but still filled with the joy of life. We added more of a water theme, since Ithaca has lots of waterfalls. The parents are represented by the fish in the lower left and right. The story behind the fish is a longer one, too long for me to tell here.

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Four Children and Their Parents, Commissioned Piece

While I'm on the subject of commissions, I thought I'd talk about several other commissions that I've done in the past year and a half.

I was approached in December 2009 to do commissioned family portrait. A husband wanted to buy it as a surprise present for his wife. We aimed for a completion date of Mothers' Day 2010. He wanted me to carve and paint a picture that featured their four children, with the parents there in a quiet role. Each of the children was represented by a shirt that featured a particular interest of each child - a chili pepper, a beer bottle, a drama face mask, and a parrot.

After much dialogue back and forth as to what might work for him and me (it has to work for both of us), here is the preliminary sketch that I made:

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Colorado Train Trip - Done!

Now the Colorarado Train Trip picture is done. There's a feeling of balance between left and right and you can really feel that train moving along. The family in the train (who I've made this picture for) stand out well. I'm happy with this one.

 
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Colorado Train Trip - Left Side is Getting Better

Here I've moved further into painting the trees smoke and people on the left. I relieved to see the left and right of this picture start to come into balance.

 

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Colorado Train Trip - Moving Beyond the Reds

This early version is one step beyond red. I'm continuing to work from the right to the left, probably because thinking about how to paint that smokestack is still on my mind.

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Colorado Train Trip - Starting to Paint

For some reason this train picture called for a red first coat of paint.

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Colorado Train Trip - Entirely Carved

Photographed a bit later, here's the Colorado train picture entirely carved. I worked to make the smoke and the trees merge. For a long time I've wanted to be able to carve the weather and things misty - rain and fog have been entirely beyond my grasp. But the smoke stack of the train is a good start on figuring out how I can do this. I'm always trying to learn...

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