Color

I've stalled on a bunch of paintings - there are cells, strings and maps, and they don't hang together. Pulled out the color swatches to get some ideas today, but it might make more sense to take a detour with some new work, figure some things out and go back to these.

6 comments:

kookaburra said...

Hey, THAT'S what I want to see--a collage of all your own paintings. And yes, they look mighty & impressive together.

Jen Bradford said...

Wow, thank you. I had been feeling discouraged, and thought it might help to shoot the drafts and get a different perspective. The color situation is driving me nuts, but there's at least plenty to chew on.

kookaburra said...

Throw out the discouragement with the dead winter grasses. Color emerges & is your friend.

Tim McFarlane said...

A lot of these are looking good already. Maybe you could take one or two of them and experiment some.

One thing I noticed is that you seem to deal with the 'strings' and 'cells' separately. Maybe you could try having them interact more on one painting.

I don't know what your practice is regarding color, but perhaps you could think about going even darker or lighter on some pieces and see what happens: more darks and few areas of more saturated colors and vice-versa. Try just black and white, and so on.

Just play :)

You've got some good stuff going here.

Jen Bradford said...

Great advice, Tim. Thanks so much. Sometimes the problem for me is liking the freshness of the draft, even if it's inconsequential and nearly monochrome. The challenge is to stay loose and not get heavy handed about "making something happen". I like your ideas.

Seth said...

That is what I call a mosaic of inspiration!