A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 5
Figuring out how I was going to connect the red grids took some time. As I mentioned previously, I printed off the image and used that to experiment with some ideas. I decided that subtle or allusive circles/globes would do the trick. An odd number, which is always the best choice in a composition, of five circles were drawn on the dry painting with a pastel pencil. Slowly I began introducing the circles and I liked the effect! This entire painting taught me a lot about values with the red color. As I painted the circles, I was careful to not let the round shape

A Painting Proces of Red on Green - Step 5
Figuring out how I was going to connect the red grids took some time. As I mentioned previously, I printed off the image and used that to experiment with some ideas. I decided that subtle or allusive circles/globes would do the trick. An odd number, which is always the best choice in a composition, of five circles were drawn on the dry painting with a pastel pencil. Slowly I began introducing the circles and I liked the effect! This entire painting taught me a lot about values with the red color. As I painted the circles, I was careful to not let the round shape

A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 4
Finally, ideas for my next painting moves alighted! As you can see, I decided to paint in 16 more rectangles of reds into the one grid area. Because these were so small, I used a brush instead of a palette knife, but I still used mixtures of reds and made sure no two were alike or next to each other. Try doing that....it is a bit of challenge. I decided I needed to start changing some of the values of the rectangles to guide the eye toward my area of interest (the 16 small reds). Some were darkened, others were painted lighter valu

A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 3
What's next? So many decisions ahead! When I began this painting, I did not have a "plan" or even a vision. I knew I wanted to paint all this lovely red on its perceptural opposite - green. Intuitively, I decided to leave this one rectangle unpainted and I turned the painting around - perhaps you noticed this. It took a few days to ponder this stage, so I went and worked on some other paintings, which is also new behavior for me. The problem to solve: I have all of this yummy color but it is relatively random and a bit static. H

A Painting Process of Red on Green - Step 2
It is time for the RED! For this red painting, I decided I wanted to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the red hue family of colors from pink/warm purples to oranges and use almost the full range of values. Tubes of paint that fit this description were made readily available along with white. I started mixing, though I was careful not to mix the paints thoroughly because I wanted the variety of reds to show in each grid and streaks were okay. A palette knife is all that I used at this stage. [By the way, I paint with water soluble oil paints.] The gr