Friday, August 28, 2009

Lavender Fields


The Rehoboth Art League, of which I'm a member, holds themed member shows throughout the year in which I love to participate. There's nothing like a theme to trigger the imagination and there's nothing like a deadline to produce motivation. The theme for September's exhibit is "Farmers Market."

I love the Farmers Market in Lewes which is held every Saturday morning in the summer on the lovely shaded grounds of the Lewes Historical Society. One of my favorite stands is that of the local lavender farm. It is that farm which has inspired my entry, "
Lavender Fields." After seeing their booth at the market, I took a trip to the farm. It's like a little bit of southern France transplanted to rural Delaware.

So many people have asked me about the process of m
y collages, so I took some pix while I was working on this one.

I was tempted to stop after Step 1. I loved the colorful ab
stract shapes and felt I could do something featuring them. I have a mantra that I have to repeat to myself over and over as I'm working, "Don't fall in love with the underpainting. Don't fall in love with the underpainting."

The base is just to establish a background color and to create bits of interest that peak through the various layers in the final image.

In Step 2, I added bits of various tissue papers to subdue th
e background so it wouldn't fight with my subject matter.Step 3 is a final cover of Ogura lace paper to subdue the background even more and to unify the whole piece.When all was said and done and I had finished the piece, I wasn't happy with the lack of contrast between the sun and the rest of the sky. I pondered over what I could use to add color back into the sun without changing the colors of the lavender that overlapped the sun. I came up with good ol' Crayola Crayons! I used the colors "Macaroni & Cheese" and "Melon" to get that golden glow back.

I have one more Farmers Market piece that I'm working on and hopefully will have that finished before the show entry deadline.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is absolutely SO interesting! You do such beautiful work! I can't believe how much went into your background - I'm wondering, do you have a picture in your head of the finished product or just keep working til it finally looks right to you?