1.04.2010

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

Begun a few months ago during the Richard McKinley workshop, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" speaks to the positioning of these beautiful hay bales in a way that gave them personality to me. I'd been working in big sky mode all week and this last day I wanted to paint more personally and close up. In a McKinleyesque style of judging an architectural landscape to be the best in show still life recently, this painting could also be considered a landscape cum still life.

It began as a loose watercolor underpainting on UArt 500 sanded paper.



And soft pastels fill in the rest of the story. In my evaluation, I see the McKinley influence prevalent in the soft trees pulled out of a mist, the broken line of the grass in the middle ground, the foreground foliage with an orange undertone, and the dots and dashes as details up front.


See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil
soft pastel on UArt 500
9x12

2 comments:

ariel freeman said...

Love this painting Bonnie. Your hay does have personality. Thanks for showing the watercolor underpainting as well. I think I am going to have to try this.

Bonnie said...

Thanks, Ariel. Using watercolors is so much fun. I'll either use a large Pike Palette with Holbein or a small Pelikan set; I prefer the latter just because of it's size, although it has great intensity, too.

Comparing the pictures here, I realize I didn't leave as much watercolor showing as I usually like, but it was a great guide.