A new gorge sketch

Here's another of the sketches I worked on early this month, still playing with blue and orange. The scene is looking east from Catherine Creek State Park (again). I stripped out the trees, so the focus is on the shapes of the lands and light, and the sunrise colors.

Painting Zion

The Landing

The Landing is my second attempt to paint scenes from my Zion National Park photos. This was the top corner of a bluff that was across a valley looking into the late afternoon sun. But once I zeroed in on this small part of that composition, I loved the shapes and lines, and the backlighting. Once I got to the finishing stages, I played with the highlight colors a bit to bring out the color in the shadows. I also played with the color in the shadows. Again, I tried to make the leap from how the photo looks to how the actual scene looked and felt. I kept thinking about the blue and orange harmonies I worked with on the music paintings and was looking for opportunities to use some of those.

This is one of the scenes I found where I could totally imagine my story eagle character Tlocan flying around.

Music for the eyes

Benny's Bounce

10"x30" Acrylics on stretched canvas $300
If you're interested in this painting, please contact me at patriciaryanart.

Another painting done. I roughed this composition out when I was working on Rhythmism, and it waited till I finished Song For Iris. I was hoping it would have a different look to it, and it does. It's a different take on the blue-orange combination, and feels a lot more energetic and active. I did really enjoy the way the colors and forms began to interweave, and the separate lines interact, just like instruments in a song. With this as with Iris, I wasn't sure how the separate lines would resolve themselves to fit in a two-dimensional space, but they just did, as I kept working. I found that again, I didn't have to think about it or work it out ahead of time—all I had to do was keep working.

Exploring (Exploding!) complementary color combinations

Yellow Backbeat With A Rising Cadence

8"x16" Acrylics on canvas panel $125
To purchase this painting, click HERE.

After finishing this new one last night, I'm thinking I'm just going to stay with blue and orange for a while. The moods of these last two paintings are so different that I'm wondering just how much range you have within a two-member complementary color scheme. It was a real revelation to stop thinking of pairing single colors in favor of pairing their whole families. (Thank you again, Robert Burridge.) Not just orange, but yellow-orange, red-orange, gold, and citrine (green-orange), paired with true blue, pthalo blue, cyan, greenish blue, violet-blue. Take all those shades and multiply them by a few different values, from pale to darkest, and you have a forest of colors to play with.

It's like throwing a party for your favorite couple, and inviting all their interesting friends to come too.