Category: art

Painting (15) Abstract Forest

~ Meg ~ 19 Comments

I wanted to experiment with something a little different – an abstract piece. However, I didn’t want to just smear paint on canvas and call it a day. This will sound a little mad, but I dreamt about painting the night before and how it could be done. I started with an underpainting of unbleached titanium and a tiny bit of black which almost looked like aged stucco when I was finished. (I should have taken a photo, duh.)

Then I used three colors: Cadmium orange, Phthalo green and Dioxazine purple which I squeezed from the tube directly onto the canvas. Next I used a technique I learned from watching a video on how to paint like Willem de Kooning. (Not that this is in his style, but that I used a palette knife to remove paint and expose the underpainting in places.) This is the result:

In the Forest ~ acrylic on 16×20 canvas

The Year Of Drawing Adventurously – Week 20: Bug

~ Meg ~ 33 Comments

Following the chart to 52 drawings this year.

The scarab beetle was sacred in ancient Egypt. (I am not an Ancient Egyptian, just to be clear). The god Khepri, who was Ra as the rising sun, was represented by a scarab beetle-headed man. Khepri would roll the sun across the sky in the same way the scarab (or dung beetle) would roll dung into a ball into which they laid their eggs so that as the larvae emerged they were surrounded by a food source. (I know, gross, but nature’s recyclers, right?) It was this birth and cycle of renewal that corresponded to the birth of the sun each morning. Here is my scarab beetle:

The Year Of Drawing Adventurously – Week 19: Eyes

~ Meg ~ 26 Comments

Following the chart to 52 drawings this year.

I picked up my drawing pencils in 2016 after a very long hiatus. I had written a kids science fiction story and thought it would be cool to have illustrations. Long story short, my first attempts were terrible. In addition, I couldn’t visualize exactly what I wanted to sketch. Back to the drawing board… literally. In order to improve and to teach myself anew, I started using photography for inspiration. I have a coffee table book of Man Ray’s stunning images, so I started paging through. “Glass Tears” is one of his most famous photos and is part of a large collection of photographic art owned by Sir Elton John. I had the privilege of seeing this collection in person last year when it was on exhibition at The Tate in London. That’s me in the selfie reflection:

I decided to draw this again because it features ‘eyes’ so prominently. Here is my “Glass Tears” sketch: