Color Considerations, Beach Walkers, Studio painting by Everglades artist Jo-Ann Sanborn

Beach Walkers

20x20

It's been a really busy time for me, and will continue to be throughout the month, but by May I'll be back on schedule and beginning my summer body of work. It's something I look forward to every year, the end of the busy, selling season, and down to some serious work! I have a couple of commissions to finish up, but then should have some time if you're needing a special painting. Just give me a call or email me and we'll talk about your needs.

I've been teaching recently, and talking about color always gets me excited! Color is everywhere today, more color than at any time in the past. Everyone enjoys color in their home, clothes, and in the objects they use every day. We relate colors to psychology, and most colors have both a negative and positive connotation. The way you use color in your painting can set the tone or mood, and provide harmony.

When you’re considering what colors to use, you may choose a traditional color harmony, such as compliments, triad, or analogous colors, or you may look outside the traditional harmonies as you look for ways to establish a relationship between the objects in your painting. Here are some considerations:

Color can lead you on a visual path
Repeated colors can provide a rhythm in the painting
Colors reflect on and off the objects around them
Either warm or cool colors should be dominant in the painting
Colors must support each other rather than clash
Look for a dominant, a secondary, and an accent in both color and value.

Happy Painting!

On the Trail, Everglades Painting by JoAnn Sanborn

On the Trail

40x30

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In the studio I've been working on a commissioned piece. On the Trail, today's painting, refers to the Tamiami Trail, a road that goes from Miami to Tampa. Once you get outside the population centers of Fort Meyers and Naples going south the road travels through the Everglades into fairly remote and protected areas. It's not uncommon to see alligators in the canal along the roadside. The road travels through the lush green of the Fakahatchee to the more open prairies of the Big Cypress and Everglades National Park. This scene is in the Fakahatchee, not far from Marco Island. I've painted in this area before, and did a small painting that can be seen on my blog in preparation for this larger commissioned painting.

Composition, Traveling Light Acrylic Painting by Jo-Ann Sanborn

Traveling Light

24x30

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Traveling Light was constructed in exactly the same manner as the painting of the Everglades that I showed you in steps several posts back, however this painting is organized and simplified a little differently. Here the space is more open, and the composition leads you into the background. The viewer most probably enters the picture in the middle ground where the palm trees are located, is drawn into the painting by the color and palms, then into the background by the stronger background colors, and only then comes around to enjoy the foreground. In this way I've allowed the foreground to become a partner is keeping the viewer in the painting rather than a wall keeping the viewer out. The viewer is then drawn again into the middle space and so views again. The painting has a feeling of mystery and lightness and the palms feel like travelers rather than solidly planted in one place like so many palm groups.

Florida Everglades Painting set aside

Today I cut the sky into the trees and defined the forms more fully. I'll most likely do this at least one more time before the finish. The main palm is beginning to show some character. The two almost equal grass forms where the water goes left need to be softened and maybe joined, and the light can be strengthened. After these changes I'll put the painting up on my studio wall for a few days to see if it needs a final pass. During this "waiting time" I really get to know a painting and gradually see issues that need to be resolved to finish it or come to hate it and will almost start over when working on it again. It's a big difference from my daily paintings, seen here, which are done in one day.

Process - Building Form

Today I’m starting to refine and redefine the value shapes. At the moment there are three values—the dark upright trees, the light sky, and the flat land. These will develop into many values as each form is built but will retain their original character. Now the ground is lighter and flattening out because it receives the most light. The uprights will always be the darkest value because they receive the least light, as does the bottom of the grasses. I want to remember to retain the water that can be seen in the foreground of the working photo, so I’ve put it in—it’s another “flat,” so it will receive more skylight and be lighter than the upright grasses around it.

At this point in the painting the main forms are also being built, with special attention to the negative shapes created. It’s a push-pull process. I’ve cut in around the main palm, reshaped it, and cut in again. The pines have been shaped and reshaped. For me this part is a building process –build up, reassess, tear down, build up again. I’m also very much aware of the edges of the canvas and how each of them contributes to pushing the painting into shape. And as the sky becomes yellower, the painting starts to lean in the direction of the original color stratagy.