Flower Rise

My wife got home from work shortly after I finished this painting. I rushed her into the room I often use as a studio and asked "What do you think?"

She answered, rather hesitantly, "I like it."

"Great!" I said, "What do you think it is?"

"Hmm. Maybe sunrise or sunset?"

"Oh. Actually, it's a flower."

"Are you sure?"

Which is why I decided to call the painting Flower Rise. Anyway. It's oils on canvas and it's a bigger one, somewhere around 40 centimeters by 50, I think.

Mainly, with this one, I wanted to try one new technique and practice another. I wanted to try using masking tape to create clean, siimple lines and I wanted to do the entire painting with the large brush that I had used for the previous painting. (The brush is shaped like a traditional house-painting brush and has longer bristles bound into a wooden handle. Someday I'll learn what it's called.)

I started by laying a very thin layer of zinc white mixed with linseed oil over the entire canvas. I gave that a day to dry a bit, then used architect's masking tape to create thin pinstripes wherever I wanted to seperate the colors. I used a technique I'd seen used on tv shows about customizing car paint jobs. I took a section of tape and ran it onto the canvas using my fingers to push it into place. Not a very clean technique but effective.

Once I had the tape on the canvas I applied very small amounts of color to the brush using a palette and then brushing it on in long, even strokes, making sure to pull the paint along the canvas, rather than applying tons of paint. I also took pains to pull the paint down from the edges of the tape so that all the colors are darker along the tops and lighter along the bottoms of their respective areas.

This painting was a bit of a departure for me as I had no reference photo or sketch and no clear idea of what I wanted before I began. I only knew that I wanted a white base, light colors and masked off lines.

I'm pretty pleased with the way this one turned out. I'm sure I'll be using the masking tape technique many more times as well as sticking with the large brush. Right now I'm very tempted to re-do "Bugs" and "Norwegian Wood" using these techniques. We'll have to see if this feeling holds or if I decide to go with something new.