Saturday, April 30, 2016

Cycad Painting 4

© Ellen Blonder
I should know my own tendencies better than I do. As soon as I washed in some background, the painting feels anchored. I'm still not sure where this is headed, but giving the elements some solid ground suddenly makes this feel better.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Cycad Painting 3

©Ellen Blonder
I've been letting this marinate, not sure how to proceed, but the cycad looked lost alone on the canvas. I decided to add a goat, based on my photo of this character I saw near Kilauea, Kauai. He was not wild, but in a grassy area behind a fence. Did he know how magnificent he looked, so different from the other goats in the same pasture? The way he posed, I suspect he did.

Of course, I still don't know where this painting is headed. Do I add an egret above? Add some torn sketchbook pages to make a collage?

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Cycad Painting 2

© Ellen Blonder

Cycads intrigue me, with their primitiveness, as if a dinosaur could appear behind it at any moment. My reference for this was a handsome specimen from the Mcbride Garden in Kauai.

I didn't photograph this in progress, but here's the pretty finished painting of it against the prepared background. I have an idea to surround it with other bits of Hawaiian flora and fauna, so it looks like a big page torn out of a sketchbook, without more of a background than this.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Cycad Painting - Beginning

 I inherited this 40 x 50-inch canvas from my mother-in-law, and while the painting was in bad shape, it was on heavy linen, mounted on a sturdy frame, something worth saving. When the paint began peeling off, I thought I'd try stripping it.


Much of the paint peeled off in strips, but the rest had to be scraped with a palette knife.
The rest of the paint was stuck fast, so I could only cover it with gesso. I thought I could make the underlying texture work for me, although I had no idea what I was going to paint.

Cycad Painting - Beginning

 I inherited this 40 x 50-inch canvas from my mother-in-law, and while the painting was in bad shape, it was on heavy linen, mounted on a sturdy frame. When the paint began peeling off, I thought I'd try stripping it.
Much of the paint peeled off in strips, but the rest had to be scraped with a palette knife.
The rest of the paint was stuck fast, so I could only cover it with gesso. I thought I could make the underlying texture work for me, although I had no idea what I was going to paint.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Dark Rooster - Final

© Ellen Blonder
I've added grass details to the middle ground and details to the background. I knew this painting would take a while, and I'm happy to finally be done.