acrylic on canvas
36 in. x 48 in.
View the five stages in the painting process in 35 sec.
Each phase was painted on a new day. Starting with ink and brush on paper this drawing came at once. There was no planning. The design process integrated computer graphics, photography and digital painting.
By the third step I was working on canvas with pencil and acrylics. I began laying in the color scheme and building the forms with brush strokes. This process went on for a second day. There were judgements about transparency, color contrasts and the illusion of a shallow depth with overlapping planes. Although there was a lot of geometry I wanted it to remain loose and be rendered quickly.
Lastly, I resolved the challenge of stark and vividly colored forms by uniting the composition with transparent white. I had used this solution decades before in rendering large spirals on canvas. The painting was on the verge of failing, exploding into chaos. I was more pleased that the picture evenually returned to the initial rendering on paper that I had begun with.
