Monday 2 February 2015

Tulips

I decided on a change of subject matter today, there were flowers in the house and nothing at the moment is safe from a trip to my cramped working space for the purposes of being painted.

Interesting though I found the exercise, I'm a little bit disappointed by the final result and all down to some poor choices that I made early on. My biggest mistake was one of compositional arrangement, the gap in the middle of the picture being the main culprit. On reflection I'd have been better including more blooms and foliage to fill more of the space as well as establishing more interconnections between the elements.

Never mind lots to think about and build upon.


Tulips - Oil on gesso board 7" x 5"

8 comments:

Linda Roth said...

Don't be dissatisfied, fix where you think it failed. Lighten up., add to the composition. Cover the whole picture plane with tulips! Let go. There never has to be a bad painting if you have more paint. :-))

Ken Young said...

Some variety in the heights of the flowers would also help, Mick.

Unknown said...

Linda - Thanks, good advice and I agree more paint cures all sorts of problems.

Unknown said...

Kn - Agreed, some height variation would also make a difference to the deficient composition.

Yvonne Harry said...

I actually quite like the composition. It seems very 'modern' to me and although the flowers are of a similar height, you would have room to rotate slightly the mount to alter this. The space in the middle can be easily dealt with by the addition of another leaf in the background.

Unknown said...

Yvonne - thanks for the ideas, I'll certainly bear them in mind next time out.

Linda Roth said...

On the flowers: why not repeat them? Just because there's only one vase full, doesn't mean you have to paint one. Paint any number in different values till you're satisfied with the composition. Same with the pomegranate. To be really modern with the pomegranate, the lighting would be straight on, like Magritte's Apple on that bowler hat.

Unknown said...

Linda - Thanks, good ideas for my next attempts.