More inventing = More fun ( Plus, SALE Announcement Below!)

Dog Made Of Moonlight

The moon dog is finished! For quite a while I wasn't sure I could scale up my 8"x10" sketch to 18"x24" and have it be interesting at all—it was such a simple design that it looked rather empty, like a dinner plate with two croutons on it. I was ready to paint over it and start again on a smaller panel when I finally got an idea to break the background into horizontal strips and just apply the paint within the strips. Desert landforms frequently have a noticeable horizontal aspect to them, with their different-colored strata and contours. I used a 7/8" brush and worked quickly and roughly, sticking to my color triad of red-violet, blue-green, and yellow-orange—plus blue which didn't belong but I liked it anyway—and making the values a bit on the imaginary side. I stopped trying to make it look realistic, settling on making it attractive and interesting as my main goal.

I was initially surprised by how much the rough, blocky strokes evoked the feeling of rocky bluffs, and it was fun playing inside the lines—sort of like taking the rules and using them to cheat, exploiting a design element in an unrealistic way to emulate the natural features of desert cliffs and canyons. I wasn't sure how best to use the two main colors so I just kept interleaving them, varying the values to support the overall design. As with my other recent paintings, a lot of my inspiration came from Bob Burridge—"If you don't like the direction, turn left and and keep going."

Like my sun dog, this lady is a spirit, made purely of moonlight, with an ethereal, reflective quality; an observer and thinker, far-seeing and wise.

****ANNOUNCEMENT****ANNOUNCEMENT****ANNOUNCEMENT****

I'm painting so much now my studio is crammed full and I'm running out of room!!

20% OFF EVERYTHING IN MY ETSY STORE THROUGH OCT. 31!!!!