Friday, February 12, 2010

Suggested Landscapes



These two paintings came about by chance. I had this failed painting I had reworked so much that the tooth of the paper was almost gone in some areas. I decided to cut the sheet into four pieces and apply some pumice gel with acrylic paint to restore the tooth.
Because the stain I used was so thin, two of the pieces showed a ghost of a landscape (see pics below), so, with some apprehension, I let my imagination run wild. For me, this means taking great chances because all previous paintings that came out from my head had been real flops. To my surprise, this time I ended up with two small studies in which I had incorporated things learned from direct observation or from other paintings. It's amazing how little successes like these have the power to erase our failures and prepare us to take more chances with our painting.

2 comments:

Donna T said...

Nice saves on both of these!
What a great way to use your imagination. It might be fun to make some ghosts first (blobby, vague landscape shapes?) and see if you could turn them into something. If nothing comes to mind you could always paint over them.

Adriana Meiss said...

Hi Donna! I think it's a good idea to do that on purpose. I have lots of rejects that are going to be painted over very soon....