Work in progress: still life abstracted

Work in progress

This one is a development in a series I was working on - the original arrangement was very traditional, set up by a friend.   The colours appealed to me but not the arrangement, so I decided to play with the shapes and invent some patterns.

The colours are terribly difficult to show as the coppery rose colours don't come out well - the vase and some of the leaf patterns are a really coppery rose colour and not as brown as they appear here.  There is also a lot more variation in the blues as they slide from greeny to puplish.  The coppery/rosy colours play beautifully against the turquoises and blues but it isn't picked up well by the camera :>(

I moved objects around, played with pattern - leaf patterns on vases or material blurring into real leaves, the difference between reality and pattern blurred.

It's one I can work on in quiet moments in the evening, when the TV isn't exactly absorbing.  It's in an A4 moleskine, which means I can draw back into the coloured pencil easily with an electric eraser, creating pale lines back into colours.

As I have no idea of the final version, it's a matter of pushing/pulling the lights and darks and colours as I go, balancing, bringing out, making colours sing against each other - until I can't push it any more.

'Some, a little and a lot'  - basic thoughts on colours in a painting by I-forget-who - so a lot of blue, a little of the coppery rose and  some yellow is what I have going on and am balancing.

There isn't a huge contrast in tone at the moment and to an extent won't be in the finished work - I think - and so I have to decide where to push darks, where to have edges lost even more, where to echo a tiny flash more yellow, where to crop the final piece ..........

The original objects were blues but earlier I'd played with complementary colours as well  see here:


Click on the image above to see another in the series that plays with complementary colours - the original vase was a vivid turquoise.

Click here to see other still life stuff and more in this series of experiments - I'm doing a show with friends based around still life and wanted to take my own angle on the subject.

Comments

Benco said…
I really like this, loads of movement. Very interesting take on a still life.
12:43 pm
Lisa Le Quelenec said…
Hi Vivien, I feel like I could dive into those colours, the soft fluidity of the shapes and gentle light add to that feeling. It's like an underwater still life and very beautiful.
5:04 pm
vivien said…
thank you both :>)
2:21 pm
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