Saturday, March 25, 2017

Drum Circle....or Details, Details, Details

Detail of Drum Circle
18x24 inches acrylic on canvas
 
This week's blog is about my recently finished painting, Drum Circle. It's fairly large-ish for me, 18 x 24 inches and my intent was to show a scene with different folks interacting with each other. I also wanted to play with the full value spectrum of light and dark.

 

Another artistic aspect I wanted to play with was design and composition. By the time I'd firmed up the painting's composition I was working with a triangle, formed by the left hand figure's leg pointing up to the background building's yellow high light and coming down to the toddler's tippy toed feet. I also had a secondary visual “pathway” or circle of interest....hints of pure red in the drum leader's tie-dyed t-shirt, the hat with the Drum Circle sign, the toddler's drum and his drum stick, and the cup of cola in the nurse's hand. Both these visual devices or details are to guide the viewer's eye around in the painting.


 

I also had a ball doing subtle brush work details, like the side turn of the nurse's head with just a bit-o-glint on the sunglasses, her nose and lower lip.

  

I was also pleased with the free handed brushwork of the nurse's hand holding the white cola cup centered on her co-worker's white shirt. By varying the color and temperature of the different whites, I was able to show them all together yet differentiate between the different white objects.



Along with the detail of the toddler intent on beating his red drum at the top of the post, I had a blast doing different LOD or level of details on different sections of this painting. These different bits of detailing within a complex painting were a classic example of both “the devil is in the details” and the delight to be found in detailing a painting just enough to tell it's story with out over doing the level of detail.

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