How I painted "Missed You" with just 4 Colors

I received a question by email about how I made the painting I discussed earlier called "Missed you". Another question was about the palette used.

Here's the painting again:

In spite of all the variations of color that you see in the painting, the palette is very limited.

I only used titanium white, burnt sienna, burnt umber and a cool ivory black, of white I always have large amounts of these colors (and 3 more) available for painting, because I paint a lot of portraits and human figures..and since mixing creates many more colors with these four for topics other than human flesh.

                        


For this painting, I chose ivory black because it's a cool black, which would give me a bluish gray when I mixed it with white. And blue is the complementary to orange, of which the color of some hair colors is a derivative.

The variations in color and value are achieved by mixing. Every inch of the painting has all four colors mixed together., with predominance of one of them in different areas. For example, then, on the hair, burnt sienna and burnt umber predominate ..but there is black and white in it as well... just less.And there is burnt sienna and burnt umber in the gray background and in the "apparently white light and highlights", just less.

A painting is a sculpture of light...but remember, that light is like water, it seeps through and moistens everything it touches to a larger or lesser extent. Thus, the light of the environment, the reflected light from the objects in space, all acquire the color of each other.There are no absolutes. Creating this
concept with colors gives a more real and dimensional appearance to your painting, regardless of your style.

I only use 2-3 sizes of brushes, and the size of choice, depends on the size of the painting surface (e.g. canvas) and the level of detail I want to achieve.

You may have seen videos of people using fan brushes to paint trees. While this is a crafty shortcut, it does not always produce the most realistic look. Call me an unbeliever! I only use round, flat and rigger types of brushes..basically because I'm familiar with them, they're easy to use and they can do everything that other brushes can do.

I hope this answers your questions! Contact me if you have any more questions I'ld be glad to answer!

Thanks for supporting me by visiting my blog today and by purchasing my art!

Missed You - From This World?

A couple meets again, we don't know when or where. The embrace is soft and given to each other in total surrender. The background is as endless as the embrace, perhaps eternal. The embrace, like their bodies, and the light on them, is soft, clean and sincere.

If there is life after death, this could be the rendezvous of lovers in the afterlife, but even in life, the passage of time suspends itself when we recover contact with someone we love, or just when we actually..'love'. In a sense, then, in the language of love, life and death are one and the same, perhaps continuations of each other. There is no end.

The light and the soft gauze of her dress, and the liquid appearance of their skins, all have nearly the same hues, painted with a very limited palette, delivering the state of a complete fusion of their beings. The chromatic harmony of barely complementary colors of subdued saturation add to the sensation of unity.


Love is not red, it's not fire, Love is not the strong, nearly chaotic gallop of an untamed heart. Such is the description of lust. True love is calm and colorless, timeless and transcending distance. Love is not more strenuous nor noisier than a whisper or quiet breathing.

Wherever they are, these two, are no longer two.

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Thanks for your support by buying my art!

Till the next post!

Fire in Her Hair: A Rebirth of Venus

I've been away "surviving" hurricane Maria. I was fortunate that it didn't do damage to my home, but it did cause months-long power outages in my area. I've had power since January (the hurricane happened in September 2017) but we still get occasional outages, about once every 2-3 weeks, for several hours or a couple of days at a time. Each time they are going to rebuilt part of the electric grid, they have to shut down parts of the island of Puerto Rico, where I've been living since 2012.

In any case, I survived and I've been painting but I wanted to start showing some of the paintings I've (finally!) posted online for sale as originals or prints.

Today I'll talk introduce "Fire in Her Hair"...one of my favorite experiments in art. I've always been inspired by the Birth of Venus, by Botticelli, so I decided to make - not a copy - but a "modernized version"..of her face....a version that would travel from the time of Botticelli to ours, yet retain her air. I therefore saturated the complementary colors present in the original painting and emphasized the line. The original is made with acrylic paint on gessoed paper and measures 11 inches x 15 inches.

It's one of my favorite paintings, for its vibrant colors and calm mood. It moves yet it stares at us as it moves.
If you enjoy it as much as I have, you can get a canvas print of it, posters, or other printed home decor and stationery items at Fine Art America, where I have one of my little shops. 

I deeply appreciate your purchasing my art! Thank you and thanks for visiting my blog! :) 

Here she is:

           

Feel inspired?