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Night of the Snow Blind Moon
24 x 30 Mixed Media on Artists Canvas
$1650 |
One of the wonderful things about not being on the art fair circuit any more is I can paint what I want to paint when I want to paint it. Or not paint. This winter seemed to be most about not painting. I was knitting. Something you can do wrapped in an afghan in front of the fire. And before that it was little paintings. And note cards and things suitable for a Christmas market.
Rain on the Mesa broke the spell. I was back to my canyons. And it would follow I was back to thinking of a theme for my on-the-edge series. I begin with a drawing. And as I stretch my own canvas the drawing determines size and proportions.
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| Minimalist sketch for elk of the snow blind moon - working title |
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| Sky and moon floated and elk masked off in preparation of painting the canyon walls |
I pour my skies, float my moons and suns. I do it first as it helps determine what colors I use in the rest of the composition. I had an idea of what colors I was going to use but I seldom do a color sketch. And I had no idea how I was going to paint the elk other than they would not be realistic. I was aiming for a petroglyph appearance.
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| Working from the back to the front |
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| Next layer forward. Masking removed from the elk in front of painted canyons |
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| At this point viewers started seeing a cat jumping over the moon |
The canyons were also poured and the foreground. On the lower right you can even see some drips. It is at this stage I start refining the pours, and defining outlines. Still haven't a clue on what color the elk. Painting totally original pieces, not another church, leaves more questions as to where a painting is going. That can be the really fun part because the painting begins to call the shots.
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| Cat jumping over the moon gone and first layer of color on elk |
Tweaking begins. Refined the sky and got rid of the cat.
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| Time to play around with the details |
The on-the-edge series plays around with the mystical. All my canyon paintings do to some extent with spirals around stars in night skies and ravens in the sky in day skies. This painting uses heart lines on the elk and spirals on their antlers. And for days I debated the ravens. It was a night painting. When a flight of ravens is in the sky there is always somewhere a raven all alone and away. That detail was inspired by the missing man formations of airplanes. I debated just the lone raven but in the end put a distant flight across the sky.
