I've recently finished another abstract commission called Hogue. It is a 36x24 inch vertical oil on canvas designed for someone's bedroom, and I came up with the design while laying awake in bed. I wanted it to be something calm but inspiring, like a good dream. In some ways the pastel colors are comforting, but in other ways the insistent use of complementary colors is energy-inducing. I first designed the purple background to be light blue, with purple shadows to give dimension to the orange spheres. However, my client said that she preferred a purple background and I'm glad she does. I think a light blue background would have been too overwhelming a contrast to the orange spheres.
When I first painted the purple background I painted it much darker, and had to go back over it with a lighter layer. It gives depth to the end result, but took a lot of paint!
Some lessons learned:
1.) Be careful of the color saturation that you mix at night, without the benefit of natural lighting. I tend to mix too dark, as I did with the initial dark purple background layer.
2.) Pay attention to your materials. If you need to "mix in" green and yellow highlights remember that paint dries and you can't do it next week. Do it right away.
3.) Symmetry. Liberally ground the colors by using warms and cools, and complementary colors, in a geometrically consistent way so that the color creates the composition and ground the painting. You can see in the details how I mixed in yellows and blues - the colors in the orange section - strategically in certain places to balance the background geometrically with the foreground. Vice versa, I also liberally added purple into an orange corner to ground the composition.
Painting: Hogue
Playlist: French Music and the Grammy's
Beverage: Hogue Riesling (very, very sweet)
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