Friday, March 14, 2008

Arboretum Perennial Garden and Church

My friend Joan (http://watercolorsbyjoan.blogspot.com) recently discussed in her blog an idea she was presented at a workshop she's taking wherein artists use elements from a number of different references and use these elements to compose a new painting.

While I had read something similiar recently, seeing her fine work, and the suggestion of my coworkers, prompted me to begin giving this idea a try as it relates to Arboretum gardens.

Last year, our newly installed perennial bed was still 'filling out' with the many flowers our students planted. I snapped some photos for our reference collection and this is my sketched attempt. From left to right are patches of pink/white gaura, verbena, ornamental grasses and cone flowers. One of the neighborhood churches takes center of interest in this view.

I see where there are some improvements needed in this rendition, but I think I'll

6 comments:

Sandy said...

Lin this is a lovely breath of fresh sping air.

Joan said...

Lin, This came out nice...so springlike. In our workshop we would use the same elements again, making something different the COI and changing the feeling of the painting. We did lots of moving around, changing color, weather, time of day, season, etc. There is an almost endless of varieties of paintings you can do with the same elements. (If you don't get bored with them.)

Teri said...

Wonderful job on this Lin.

Tami said...

Love the concept, I saw Joan's the other day and thouht it was a great idea. Love the church in the background. BTW, I would love to see yesterday's sketch bigger and on good paper. Think it would be wonderful!

Lorraine said...

What a neat idea -- it really must stretch your artistic talents to do this. I especially like the trees!
Hugs,
Lorraine

Anonymous said...

Ha! That assignment reminded me of an awful pastel I did back in a college drawing class. We were given magazines and told to compose with elements from different sources. I did this drawing of a big bottle of Jack Daniels taller than than the two farmers I stuck on either side of it and there was something else in the picture...a pig maybe. What was I thinking!? This is much nicer!