New(ish) Painting

jordan

It had been quite a while since I’d painted anything, and two summers ago I tried to remedy that by looking for something interesting in all the photos I’d taken during the drive from Illinois to Seattle. None of these were particularly compelling in their subject matter, so I eventually decided to use the subject from one photo I’d taken (near George, Washington, I believe) as a basis for a painting that reflected the varying colors and shadows from the entire collection of photos, throughout the locations and times of day from the trip. That in mind, the picture ended up with a lot of subtle blues and reds (from sky, mountains, gorges, and badlands), as well as a lot of contrasting lines (a lot of the photos were taken early in the morning or late in the afternoon). I forgot that I had done this until I needed to to use my watercolor pad a few weeks ago to make a picture of a prototype for a project that I’m working on, at which point it, like confabuler, was resurrected, and I figured I might as well stick it in a post.

EDIT: The picture above was taken with my digital camera, and while the colors look close to correct on some of my monitors (the ones with glossy screens), they look faded out and yellowed on another (with a matte screen). Sadly, I don’t think this can be avoided, since different monitors will display colors differently.

2 Responses to “New(ish) Painting”

  1. Megan Says:
    April 15th, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    Do you get a lot of paper-warping when you paint with watercolors? I am painting on 300lb. paper right now, which is slightly heavier, but i still get a lot of paper-warping. Is there anything you do to remedy that? I could tape the painting down, but I still feel I would get some bubbling in the middle of the paper then.

  2. jordan Says:
    April 15th, 2009 at 10:26 pm

    No, I actually don’t see a lot of paper warping, even though I use really low-weight paper (this picture was done on 90lb, but I usually use something in the mid 100’s). Part of the reason for this is that most of what I do is something like dry-brush (I very rarely do any washes or anything, except for basic coats, like with sky), as I like the almost-oil look that you get with that technique. Also, I tape the crap out of the sides of the picture. I think I had like 3 strips of 1.5″ masking tape holding that one down on each side.

Leave a Reply

Entries RSS Comments RSS Log in
Icons by N.Design Studio. Designed By Ben Swift. Powered by WordPress, Search Optimization and Free WordPress Themes