Rise Above It

Here is a small doodleism painting I completed yesterday, it is done on 180 lb paper which has the consistency of a thin cardboard. The doodle is composed from 2 pages of notes taken during a lengthy meeting in 2013, I was no doubt thinking about escaping. 'Rise above it' is a slogan I use to remind myself not to get too involved in small details, and to keep an eye on the big picture. That is not easy, it involves letting go a bit and trusting people, and not having the ego to think you can change everything. There is a balloon at the top that someone 'let go of', which is symbolic of the idea, and the tombstone, which is symbolic of change.

This painting is a great example of how to create depth. To create depth in a painting, put the bright colours in the front, and the pale blue colours in the back, and try to overlap things as much as possible. Notice the foreground element, the orange-yellow disk, is overlapping the middleground elements, which in turn overlap the distant blue background. The river also helps bring the viewers eye to the back. As an artist you want to think about where the eye goes when looking at the painting.

5x7" cold press, watercolour. March 2016