A Few of My Favorite Things

As the exhibitions chair for our local watercolor society, and as a teacher and coach to people who enter various exhibitions, I often hear complaints about required themes. Many people don't like them and consider them to be unnecessary and perhaps even unfair. They may be interpreting the theme too literally and therefore see it as confining.

I see required themes as being challenging -- in a good way. The theme is like a place to start, a spark that gets my locomotive engine going. Then, if I am able to stay on the track, I'll get where I'm going. "Scorpius Cryptoluna" was at the end of one of those tracks. A local gallery, which presents a juried, themed show each Fall, offered this challenge a few years ago:  "Celestial Seasons." Works had to have some connection with 'heavenly bodies or seasons.'

My response to the challenge ultimately resulted in a work that combined some of my favorite things: night skies, the moon, a raven, and yellow roses. There was literally nothing that connected these four things, other than the fact that they are things I love. Figuring out how to combine them in a painting amounted to choosing a color shceme (in this case, complementary - violet and yellow), creating shapes in various sizes and moving them around until something clicked.

"Scorpius Cryptoluna"

Once I had settled on the colors to be used and the position of the objects, I started the background/underpainting by masking out with adhesive plastic the lightest areas -- the moon and the yellow roses -- and creating an ethereal, fluid blue and violet wash liberally sprinkled with coarse salt while the paint was wet. After the wash was bone dry, I  brushed the salt away, removed the adhesive plastic, and sketched in the shapes of all the elements. The rest is no more than a combination of painting techniques -- wet in wet, dry brush, glazing and more glazing. It took a while to figure out what to push and what to pull.

I like the finished painting. It has a lot of value change, an interesting color palette, good arrangement of elements, and MYSTERY!

Inspiration:  Here it was the challenge, which I responded to by combining a few of my favorite things.