Let Themes Drive Creativity
I found this pink house in California on Catalina Island. It was everything darling with a collection of bird houses, bougainvillea and brilliant pink shadows. I just wanted to paint this stuff together, but multiple sketches using the rambler shape didn’t cut it. I finally flipped the building vertically adding an unrealistic story & a half to put these items into a workable composition. Then there was a chicken…. It simply didn’t belong with the Canaries, but it was so funny to me. The accidental yellow bird flying away kicked everything into high gear and I reached out to my mixed media to play it up even more.
So the whole thing is… we don’t have to make anything realistic. It is scary for a while…yes, but if we apply basic compositional skills of repetition and variation… we can pull it all together in an interesting way.
See “Downsizing Decisions” at the Studio Crawl. Stop by anytime October 5-6 from 12:00-6:00 p.m. to my studio at 3374 Maplewood Court, Fargo, ND. You can pick up a map for the whole crawl from me or FMVA Studio Crawl.
