Thursday, November 18, 2010

Maize

Although the sky/tree painting is still ongoing, I want to take some time away from it. Yesterday I hunted about the yard and then the produce section of the grocery but nothing jumped at me. Later I picked up a fresh dozen eggs at the local farm stand and came across some beautiful ears of corn!

I took a shortcut by photographing, processing in Photoshop, taping tracing paper to the LCD on the laptop, tracing, and transferring to a gesso panel. The yellow is dropped in for placement guidelines.

This yellow is a cadmium--so smooth, so grit-free. That is not so for all my pigments and I'm pondering how to handle rougher pigments. Can I mull them to the smoothness I want for this painting? Will I need to search out finely ground pigments?


2 comments:

  1. This is already breath taking, John.
    We grew assorted varigated corn at the farm this year. I became fascinated with the color and sheen. Even the texture of the shucks.
    To capture it so well in paint would be wonderful.

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  2. Thanks, Margaret. The variety of colors is greater than I originally imagined. This is going to be one fun piece!

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