Day Fourteen: "Murder of Crows"

I suppose by now you've figured out my "days" are a bit longer than 24 hours...

I took a side trip to the Colorado River, visited my relatives and got away from my painting for a breath of fresh air.  I've always been impressed with the Colorado river basin along the Arizona-Nevada state line; the landscape there is a fantastic melange of rock and sand, that artistically falls somewhere between Salvadore Dali's fantastic worlds and Leonardo DaVinci's background in the Mona Lisa.  In one particular area just East of the Hoover Dam, looking West in the afternoon, the Colorado River twines its way between craggy, vapid, pale indigo shadow forms.  I've always wanted to costume a model, and photograph her holding an ornate gold frame in front of this scene... the resemblance to DaVinci's painting is uncanny.

 So back to painting!!

I have this theory that you can achieve a likeness of an object not by meticulously copying it point by point, rather by deciphering the lines and patterns that abstractly make up its being.  It may sound weird, but when you look at someone or something that you know very well from a distance (say from 100 yards) you really cannot see details.  What you do recognize is body language and color patterns, or as I would describe them; gesture (or line), and pattern (or shape, remember you cannot have color without shape).

Think of this as a rephrasing of the way you think you look at something; a twist on the paint what you see not what you think you see "rule".  When you look at someone's hair for example, you cannot possibly paint each strand on a person's head (take a photograph!!).  However if you look at the pattern and draw loose, long, open S-curves, varying the closeness and arrangement, you can achieve a likeness of hair. This is a simplistic example but taken to the extreme some amazing results can be achieved.  Look at Matisse and his patterned interiors and landscapes.

These examples to the right are some patterns I've been looking at to help me with this painting.  I find that when painting nature patterns, like trees, and leaves, and even clouds, you don't have to draw every leaf (or even every tree), as with the hair example used earlier, if you decipher the pattern, and translate it in your own way, the object will  be identifiable.  Then taking a cue from Matisse, try varying the size of various patterns, or flip them mirror image for interest.  The idea is to convey the feeling of a tree or a bush; you could even see feather textures in cloud patterns, or the profile of a crows back in a mountain range.

Experiment.

Paint well...