No Place for the Fool

This painting was based on more doodles, I tried to put them together in a way that provided both an outside exterior (left side) and a closed interior (right side). The interior was based largely on a single drawing that depicted a cathedral with eerie-lighting and soaring spires that go from the ground to the roof. The outside contains items floating on the horizon, and a spiral octopus tentacle towards the bottom middle. A train of ants walks into an eddy. It should be obvious why the painting was called No Place for the Fool eh? The fool is nestled into the bottom right corner, along with a collection of other characters.

 I wanted to focus on the technique used to depict the shadow that is being cast by the sphere-on-the-stick, the item that can be seen in the outside space, next to the brick wall. Most times a shadow is sharpest at the point of contact with the item that is casting it, and the farther away it gets, the edges of the shadow become blurred. I captured this effect by painting the shadow, and then using a moist brush to gradually soften the edges. As the shadow is cast over two surfaces (the red platform and the green grass), I had to do the shadow effect in two separate stages for the two surfaces. For the red platform I used a a warm purple for the shadow, for the green I used a cooler purple.

22x11 cold press, 2010