Painting of the Week

Painting of the Week – Sunspirit

Using Pointed Shapes

In “Sunspirit”, I purposefully broke a design guideline and centered this sunflower. That choice made me so uncomfortable, it took three years to complete this painting. Adding a grid at the end helped me break up the big sunflower and finish the piece. Originally, I was thinking of family crests, portraying a sunflower in a shield like shape.

Sunflower petals come to distinctive points. Like an arrow, they direct the eye. When a point just touches the edge of another shape it activates an area and is called a tension point. This can be very distracting, useful or may be irritating. When a point is right at the edge of a painting…it is like asking the viewer to leave. If you have ever felt uncomfortable looking at a painting and don’t know why…this may be the reason. In “Sunspirit” I went to great effort to prevent most points from touching each other. Notice how the sharp yellow petal on the right points into a mass of brown shapes. And look closely, only one petal has a tip that just touches the edge of painting. Instead, most of the points are cut off at a thicker place when they reach the edge. You can fine tune your painting by manipulating the connections. Let your eyes roam around and see the different ways I have reduced tension in this painting.

Warm  up your world with  “Sunspirit”. It is  available as a notecard.

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Holiday Showcase Calendar

In my newsletter last week, I accidentally had the wrong date for the Fargo Holiday Showcase. Please correct your calendar for this event. If you made the trip last weekend to the Scheels Arena in Fargo, stop by to receive a free apology gift!

The correct dates for upcoming showcases are:

Fargo – Scheels Arena  (Booths C27-28)

Show Hours:

Friday, November 22                  4:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, November 23            9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 24
              11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.      

Bismarck Civic Center (Booth to be announced)

Show Hours:

Friday, December 6             4:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 7          9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 8
             11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.         

 

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