Vignettes

Every picture does not have to be a full blown painting.  Sometimes a simple little drawing is a nice change from complicated compositions, colour schemes and well thought out story lines.  At times, just a centre of interest on a blank background can be enough to make a very satisfying picture.

"Downey Duo" Acrylic on Paper  3.5" X 6"  

These little paintings might be done as colour sketches for a painting idea or maybe to try out a different style or technique.  Other times they may be 'just for fun'!

"Little Filly" India Ink on board 6" X 6"

I used to do a lot of pen and ink drawings as commercial illustrations.  It is a lot of fun and I think it would be nice to do them more often.  This little sketch was done as a study of a new foal that one of our mares delivered some years ago.  It can be challenging to try to create the illusion of light and shade, tone and texture using only a simple black line on a white background but the results can be very rewarding and fresh.

Creating small, simple pictures like this is a great exercise that doesn't have to take a long time to complete.  It is a great way to capture an impression or likeness of something or someone when time is short or ideas are coming fast and furious!  For an art lover on a tight budget, it could represent an opportunity to own a piece of original art, sometimes for less than the cost of a print.

Auto Racing Montage

As I have mentioned before, throughout the 1970's, 80's and into the 1990's, I worked full-time in Advertising Illustration. Many of my clients were in the automotive field, such as Goodyear Tire. I produced a number of illustrations for Goodyear during that time period and this is one example of the work I did for them. What could be more fun to paint than a montage of racing machines diverging at dramatic angles?

I tried to create an interesting and exciting composition that sweeps from back to front in a dynamic and dramatic curve. The rakish angle of the Goodyear Racer in the foreground seems to suggest thrust and speed. A montage must be carefully designed to work as an interesting unit without confusing the viewer. Often it is done as a vignette, so positive and negative shapes must be considered as well. The colour scheme must work as a unit and the design should carry the viewer's eye into the picture and keep it there. A variety of shapes and sizes of the elements within a montage are required to create visual interest. The whole thing can be a lot more difficult than you might think, at first glance.

I painted this illustration on a very fine woven primed canvas, using acrylic paint. Before I began to paint much detail over the finished drawing, I loosely painted a thin wash of colour over the general area of each individual scene, using the local colour of each one. After I painted the various elements in detail, I back-painted around the illustration with white gesso to softly define the shapes.