Wow,
Karin gave us a real tough subject to work from this week - this picture of the NYSE. I had a hard time deciding on how to tackle this challenge. Finally, I cropped a section of the photo and played with the contrast to get the view below:
I still found it to be very intimidating to even start this painting, so I tried an old trick some teachers use on reluctant students. I turned the page upside down and just tried to paint the shapes, lights, darks, without regard to if they were a guy's head, leg or a computer monitor. Still tough! My first pass, I thought was failing, so I left it to dry for a couple hours. Right before bedtime, I thought I'd look at it to see how it turned out. Mmmm, it had promise! So I added a few more strokes and called it done! It's not as vibrant as the cropped photo, but I think you can feel the anxiety and rush on the NYSE trading floor:
Wow, Karin gave us a real tough subject to work from this week - this picture of the NYSE. I had a hard time deciding on how to tackle this challenge. Finally, I cropped a section of the photo and played with the contrast to get the view below:
I still found it to be very intimidating to even start this painting, so I tried an old trick some teachers use on reluctant students. I turned the page upside down and just tried to paint the shapes, lights, darks, without regard to if they were a guy's head, leg or a computer monitor. Still tough! My first pass, I thought was failing, so I left it to dry for a couple hours. Right before bedtime, I thought I'd look at it to see how it turned out. Mmmm, it had promise! So I added a few more strokes and called it done! It's not as vibrant as the cropped photo, but I think you can feel the anxiety and rush on the NYSE trading floor:
3 comments:
Great job. It is so intimidating to look at and think about starting. I had thought about turning the last one up-side down to work on. Great trick to get the mind to quiet down.
Nancy,
I try and not look at what other people have done until I am finished...so I am just getting around to lookng at all the entries. I really like yours and I like that it feels like a painting, not just a painting of a photo. I have a hard time drawing from someone else's photo..I guess just not feeling an emotional investment, but you have really made this your own.
Looking forward to seeing more of yours.
Regards, Carol
I think it's just wonderful--full of energy; I really love the ghostly figure image between the figures. And thanks for describing your process: It's such a duanting subject, I wouldn't have know how to approach it!
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