Garden Party - The Big Finish

Garden Party

Detail

Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

From my last blog post,Garden Party-The Big Picture,  I continued painting with opaque slow drying paints, each bunch of figures. As I finished I checked my composition and found that I had indeed kept with the “rule of three” guiding lines for important points in the painting. But I also found triangles! 

I am really proud of the individual sets of characters in this painting. I tried to have the most detail in the man taking the photo, less in the posing couple.....even less in the family with two toddlers and group of talking folks in center stage. I wanted to highlight the little girl on the right, walking and texting, perfectly happy interacting with her phone. This piece ended up being a bit of commentary on how folks of different generations interact with each other. Going from the person to person chatting of the older folks thru the younger folks using their phone camera to post images to social media to the young girl in her own internet world.

Garden Party - Detail

Garden Party - Detail

Garden Party - Detail

Firebird by Frank Lyne

Firebird by Frank Lyne

Walnut

Accepted in the Downing Museum's 25th Jack Lunt Memorial Juried Art Exhibition

Garden Party - The Big Picture

Garden Party

Acrylic paints on gallery wrapped canvas

measuring 30” by 40”

Accepted in the Downing Museum's 25th Jack Lunt Memorial Juried Art Exhibition

For this painting, Garden Party, I decided to go big! My usual painting sizes are anywhere from 10x10 inches up to 18x24 inches. But after seeing some realllllly big paintings at recent art shows.....I decided to try a big canvas this time. For the size and light weight I chose a stretched canvas, and being “gallery wrapped canvas” it doesn't need a frame.

I wanted to do multiple (mostly made up) figures, in bright sunlight, interacting with each other. For something this large, I paid attention to past work flows, and did my obligatory thumb nail sketches. I kept them in the same ratio of size as the large canvas. I did one for placement, another for value and a final one for colours.

That done I blew up the pencil sketches of my characters and made paper silhouettes that I used to paint a neutral brown outline of the figures, to find their placement on the large canvas. I then used the cut out portions as a masque for painting in large swaths of acrylic glazes for the dark shadowed background and the sunlit grass foreground.

Then using slow drying acrylics, I mixed up a value palette of a red, blue and yellow paint. I mixed up along side each colour it's complement and a mixture of each for a greyed version. I laid in the first main man taking the picture. I went on to pull up the masque on the posing couple and begin painting on them. 

Next time I'll finish off the tale of this Garden Party painting.

Garden Party: Discussions

GARDEN PARTY

Acrylic Paint on gallery wrapped canvas 10” x 10”

This painting is a start on a mini-series called Garden Party. I'm using a group of (mostly made up) folks at a summer garden party in bright sunlight, talking and meeting and greeting. I'm interested in stretching my skills at painting figures that actually show what they are doing with the least amount of detailing and the most impact from value and colours.

I sketched off the figures I wanted in this small painting, and made paper cutouts to transfer the outlines of where I wanted the figures placed. I then sponge rollered a couple of layers of acrylic glazes on the top shadowed portion of the background. This was an easy way to transfer the outlines of the figures onto the stretched canvas.

I then did the same kind of sponge roller brush technique on the grass. I wanted the grass to show up as in bright sunlight....but not be TOO green. Rolling over the silhouetted paper cutouts gave me all the visual hints needed to start on painting the figures.

I worked on the different figures using slow drying opaque acrylic paints. I really enjoyed these paints for their slower drying times, with all the ease of handling of acrylics. As I was finishing the painting I decided it needed something “more”. The gallery wrapped canvas is about 2 inches thick, providing a bitty space for a small visual surprise. So I tucked in, on the side, a small puppy intently listening in on the two gentlemen's discussion.

Hopkinsville Art Guild 2017 Pennyroyal Juried Art Exhibition

This is just a bitty blog post of a shout out to the kind folks at Hopkinsville Art Guild for their lovely art reception and awards presentation this past October 29^th.

I got 3^rd place in Paintings for Just Messing About (blog postfor Just Messing About here) I also had Green Glow in the show.

Frank got BOTH 2^nd and 3^rd in 3D works for his recent Singer (blog post for Singer here) and Teacher (blog post for Teacher here).

It was a great looking show and Hopkinsville Art Guild volunteers always throw such a lovey reception. Its a great chance to meet and greet other artists and patrons.