Ideas for a painting composition I plan to tackle.

Close up of the most worked-through idea:

I don’t have a photo of stage one, unfortunately, but this is after a few days of working on yesterday’s still life composition in paint. You can see that the blue cloth in the middle of the canvas, while only hinted at in the sketch, does a great deal of the work in tying the forms and colors together throughout the painting.

The above sketch is a preliminary drawing for a still life painting I’m working on. You can see that not only are the objects of a pleasing variety of scales, but forms and lines repeat and echo throughout the drawing, forming one type of “calm” compositional unity.

So the final composition winner was this one, a odd down-angle on the protagonist and her Mr. Not-So-Right, and the man holding is hand behind his back to reveal to us his bloody shirt cuff. Uh-oh! This is where people start screaming at the screen telling her to run.

Anyway, this is the final drawing, done from some photo reference and a background mockup I did in Google SketchUp. What a great little program for Google to give away for free.

I also want to thank Kate Seidman of The Art Room Boutique and Paul Cary Goldberg for the wonderful opening on Snuday. We had quite a crowd for a cold February Sunday afternoon, and there were several times where the little store was packed to capacity. Thanks to all who came out!

This is a book cover piece. It’s a mock assignment on the Cennini Forum. Here’s the synopsis of the imaginary novel:  “set in an urban setting, Lucy is unaware that danger stalks her. A serial killer is on the loose and she is his next target. But her attentions are elsewhere since she met Charles. After only two weeks, the normally skeptical Lucy has been swept up in a love affair she’s only dreamed of. Charles is attentive, bright, handsome and…well, he’s perfect. Perhaps a little too perfect. This Hitchcockian thriller moves at a breath-taking pace with unexpected twists at every turn as a mysterious McGuffin falls into her lap, driving the story forward to it’s final surprise ending.”

So you can see it’s good fun. The above is my sheet of 32 compositional sketches, done in pencil with a little red tossed in for design considerations. I’ll show the final design tomorrow.