I love, love mixing color. I can’t wait to figure out a palette for a painting, it's like rushing to get to my favorite part of a story. I dove into this painting of a blue iris for my bedroom in that fashion, no drawing on the canvas, no blocking out, just color! Pure fun baby! That is something I love about acrylics, you can paint over them to your heart's content. No worries about getting it right the first time.
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| Blue Iris, palette test |
Unfortunately, towards the end of getting most of the colors and shapes blocked out, I noticed that the iris wasn't fitting on my canvas how I wanted it to. The background, the left back petal and foreground petals seemed too small, the center section seemed off. What the ...?
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| Color and shapes blocked onto canvas, 1st time. |
I kept looking at my drawing and my canvas wondering what was wrong. Eventually, it dawned on me. In my haste to get painting, I had forgotten all about proportion! The proportional size of the drawing that I created from my reference photo didn’t match the canvas proportion! Sheez, that is usually one of the first things I check when starting a new painting and I missed it. Harrumph!
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| First drawing, 4.5 x 6 inches, wrong proportion for a 16 x 20 inch canvas! |
I thought it was appropriate that I posted about failure last month, since I literally had to go back to the drawing board to correct my mistake this month. I re-proportioned my drawing and added a basic grid, then re-sketched the iris on the canvas using the same grid. I was absolutely making certain that I would flip failure on it's head!
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| Second drawing, 4 x 5 inches |
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| Canvas size, 16 x 20 with new grid. |
Of course I was a bit annoyed, I had made a goal with this painting to be more efficient with my time. Specifically, focus more on blocking out shapes and colors before details. I have a tendency to get caught up in the little details too soon and boy, I certainly missed seeing the bigger picture this time! :D I am glad I figured it out, since I am much happier with the result. As I finished blocking out the color the second time, everything fit where it should. Hurrah!
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| Color mostly re-blocked in, grid almost covered. |
Thankfully, it's only a painting and one that was possible to fix when the calculations were off. It's not like having your space probe crash into a planet! However, it is a good lesson to remember next time I am tempted to start building without making sure my foundations are in place!
>^-^<
Tina
