Often I create a painting that has a deep meaning, it just takes a little while for me to understand what it is. This painting depicts a reptile-like creature standing on a landing pad, the creature has luminescent wings. Beside the creature stands a mother and child in shabby clothes, the mother holding a bag. The background is a red sunset or sunrise. Honestly I do not understand what this all means yet, but it looks cool.
The background sky was done with a glaze-technique. Blue-green paint was applied on top a dry layer of red. In watercolour, the light bounces off the white paper and optically mixes the layers as the light reached your eye. This means that the dark colours of the sky are a mix of two pure colours. By reducing the thickness of the blue-green layer, more red shows up, which gives the sunset effect. For the composition, the animals wings dominate the scene...it was important to keep the outline of the wing visually interesting, to do this, the line itself is like a wave, and I also made part of the wings outline blurry, to add variety. There is also a collection of shapes painted on top of the wing just for fun.
Stand on Two, watercolour 7.5 x 11" cold press, 2008 (No. 1443)
I really like the colors in this one!
ReplyDeleteMaybe the meaning has something to do with the creature. Just as it stands on it's two legs, the mother and child must rely on each other for support. You could also ask whether the creature really exists or is it a manifestation of the peoples' thoughts? I don't know...just thinking aloud.