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.
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.
vivien said…
thank you both :>)

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