Monday, February 20, 2012

Almost Blue

Hey guys,

The Almost Blue show at Phone Booth Gallery is only a week away, here's my progress on the piece and the final image.

Blue is an interesting colour, often associated with the sea or the emotions of the psyche. Particularly of interest were the deeper blues, the lower layers of the mind, where boundaries between the real and the imagined blend. It's also fascinating to note the Blue colour receptors in the eye are situated outside main focal area on the retina and there aren't as many as the Red or Green- they only constitute 2% of the total!

I started out with pencil, once I worked out the linear aspects I started blocking in the background.


But then I started experimenting some cobalt blue pastel mixed with iridescent medium and coloured pencils to find the background, which threw the piece out of balance. 



Had to use a lot of different media in the end to finish it, I ended up using iridescent white mixed with blue pastel to get the glow effects.
 The focus was to create an abstract pattern with the lights/textures over the whole, I'm unfamiliar with the media so it was mostly guesswork though! 

I hope some of you get the chance to see it in person, as the iridescent effects are more visible in person.
Cheers!






8 comments:

  1. wow beautiful piece Rod! Wish I could see this in person. Love how her arms stretch up into the composition.
    I get obsessed with finding the perfect blues as well ... my oil palette has at least 4 different hues at any time.

    Hope all is well man - talk to you soon I hope!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Scotty, good to hear from you again and see some more updates!

      Delete
  2. This look stunning! Great contrasts and composition.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, it was a tough one!

    ReplyDelete
  4. The mixture of the bright cyans in the owls and the deep blue around the girl really work well! Her skin tone pops out and has my eye constantly returning to her, but I can't help but look at all the owls - love that you gave them varied expressions. I'll probably go out to see this just because it's so beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is an incredible piece! Your time and effort was well spent on this one. I just moved to Southern California so now I can go to all these galleries!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous2:50 PM

    Amazing Work!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I fell in love with this work the first time I saw it (though I learned of this through the model's blog)! You really have an eye for detail and I just love how luminous the final rendering is. I hope you don't mind; I shared this (properly crediting you, of course) through one of my blogs (posterous)--I was that amazed. Keep on drawing! :)

    ReplyDelete