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.

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?

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.

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.

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.