It can get hard.
You loved the colors and shapes in your sketch—in this case, a collage—and then it turns out that the painting process throws all sorts of hurdles in your path.
Caryl C. took her inspiration for this painting from a snippet of collage, about three inches long. She transferred it to a canvas, four feet long. Anybody who has ever chosen a color swatch for a bedroom wall knows that we react very differently to a small patch of color than we do to the same color in a large area. When 3 inches are expanded to 4 feet, this changed color perception is magnified accordingly. The act of painting is never just a matter of transferring shapes and colors from a small sketch. Strange things happen when you paint. The painting can take off on its own, especially as in this case, when it’s abstract. You can get to an impasse, where you can neither hold on to your initial concept nor see clearly where you’re going.
At this point, you can regain your bearing if you reverse the process: you sit down with a sketch pad and you sketch the painting in its present stage—as if it were a view out the window or a still life set up on a table. This time out can help you see it fresh.
Painting is an adventure. We’ll see where it takes Caryl. The adventure can take a few hours, or weeks or months. Years.
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 