award-winning fine art
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.
Edgar Degas
Sometimes, I approach the canvas with a clear objective in mind, knowing exactly what I’m going to work on – be it a corner of the canvas or a feature of a face or whatever. Other times, I have absolutely no clue. Just step up and see what happens, letting it form and evolve kind of organically. And, yep – it’s the latter approach that yields the best results.
Hm. Had meant to post more updates as the painting was progressing. Now it’s almost done. Oops.
It’s interesting to me that as a holistic practitioner, I am trained to see the whole body – or, the sum of its parts – rather than focusing on just a part; and yet, in painting, I find myself in a zone where I am seeing only one part and working on only one part with no regard for how it fits into the whole. An interesting dichotomy, and one which I need to correct.
Anyway, Clare still needs her muzzle done, and I’m hoping to finish this painting before Christmas.
Clare is an amazingly sweet Rhodesian Ridgeback living in Cambridge. This is just the basic outline sketch thrown on with charcoal to set the basic lines.
Let there be color.
It’s a metaphor for this blog, really. It’s completely empty and ready to be created. Images, words, ideas to be splattered across it. But when they’re blank, they’re perfect in their promise.
This canvas is 38″ x 30″ and I stretched it with the intent of putting on it the expressive eyes of a big dog.
Nancy Anderson