Cat 63, Lizzy on the bed
Acrylic on board. 12" x 12".
Lizzy on the bed, when she stops in mid-grooming and stares before resuming her task.
I have been doing some looking and reading on the works, techniques and approaches of other people in their artwork. A few things are beginning to sink in on how I have been working.
- The most common problem is using a poor composition. No amount of fancy brushwork will compensate for that.
- Not giving enough attention to correct proportions at the start. I tend to go back in and correct angles and forms after being well into the painting, thus creating a lot of nuisance rework.
- The overuse of highly saturated color. When all the colors are intense, none of them stand out. A solution is to "gray down" some areas to create better contrast and emphasis on the focal point(s).
- And finally, I think my work would benefit from a variation of hard and soft edges- some forms may be sharply defined, and others may be softer and not so defined.
My goals for this painting:
1. Getting the proportions of the forms correct,
2. Desaturate the colors,
3. Use both soft and hard edges.
