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Killbear #2
Artist: Cindi Moynahan-Foreman
11x14 Mixed Media (on hardboard) |
This started as a plein air piece that I began to paint in the late afternoon and (unhappy with the results) decided to abandon.
I loved the contrast of the hard, dark, grey/blue rock and the soft, sunlit, green/yellow grasses. I loved watching the movement of the grasses in the gentle wind.
Later that evening I attempted to salvage the painting by adding soft pastel. This helped a little but it still was not exactly what I wanted to achieve.
I then decided to tear strips of paper from some Killbear campground maps and paste them to the board to give structure to the rocks. I loved how this was developing on top of the acrylic and pastel background!
Finally, I took out my acrylic coarse modelling paste and applied it with a toothbrush to emphasize the beautiful rhythms of the sunlit grasses on the rocks.
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| Detail 1: Collage of campground maps. |
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| Detail 2: Collage and coarse modelling paste |
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| Detail 3: Collage and coarse modelling paste to show movement of the grasses |
I am quite happy with the final result and this certainly reaffirms that there's no harm in playing or "moodling" (as Brenda Ueland would put it) when your Plan A (i.e. an acrylic plein air) fails to achieve the results you had hoped for!
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| Killbear #2 (unframed) |
“The imagination needs moodling,
long, inefficient happy idling,
dawdling and puttering. ”
~Brenda Ueland~
