Can it really be 2012 already? I don’t know about you but my life seems to be passing by faster than the speed of light! It’s a new year and it is full of promise and progress. I am looking forward to a wonderful new year. I have posted the pastel piece on my contemporary art page (you can’t miss it — it is made of pastel colors). I really like the colors in this piece and I never in a million years would have guessed that I could like pastel colors. It was a really good exercise for me. Not only working with light values but also learning to distinguish subtle value differences. I previously would have characterized pastels as muted, quiet colors. However, in person this piece is quite vibrant. Thanks go to my teacher for encouraging me to work on a composition solely consisting of light and light medium colors.
The other news of the day is that my work, Structure#1 which was displayed at Visions Art Museum in San Diego has been sold!!! This is wonderful news but I have to confess I did feel some sadness that it is no longer in my possession (well for a few minutes at least!).
And, last night was my first class at Art Center. I was somewhat nervous having never taken an art course before but I really like the class and I think it is going to be fabulous experience for me.
I also started to work with curvilinear motifs but this work is still in its infancy and I’m currently working on a composition that is strictly limited to light and light medium values (pastels). I have always said that life is too short for pastels but I can see now how important their role is in creating rich vibrant color.
This is the original block taken from a larger quilt. Each participant in the challenge received a similar block. The quilt was vintage 70s fabric (maybe even sheets!) and to be nice, really hard to look at!
Notan is a Japanese word meaning dark-light. In composition, it focuses on the interaction between positive and negative space and recognizes the separate but equally important identity of both a shape (black) and its background (white). When I first started assembling black and white compositions, I was not very successful in creating a good interaction (see the second photo).
After many compositions, I started to realize that I really needed to pay to attention to the interaction of the black line with the white background and also to the white line with the black background. In my beginning compositions, I did not have many lines only shapes and the result is a fairly boring composition. My latest piece is getting better (the first photo).
Ribbons of Color
Is it really February already? Yikes! It seems as if I have already packed one year into the month of January. Here’s what I mean: I sold Structure #1 which was displayed at Visions Art Museum in San Diego (yeah!); I sold Recycled #1 (yeah!); I’m taking a color and composition class at Art Center (!); and I’m taking my first oil painting class. In addition, I’m continuing on with my color studies and I am really happy that I can see progress (forgive the photo quality; operator error). Here is January’s composition:
For this quilt, I chose a simpler composition (strip sets) so I could focus more specifically on color. This time I focused more on placement of each color with the adjacent colors. I also tried to stretch the range of values; combining very light, medium and very dark values. I’m learning that a composition doesn’t necessarily need very much of the very light or very dark values; it little goes a long way. I was also trying to do a better job of incorporating warm and cool values. I need more work on this. But, all in all, I can see progress and I’m glad.