Painting x 2D Outcomes 3 (Finished Piece and Next Ideas)

This is the next stage of my canvas piece. I decided to paint a smooth gradient between the green to pink, which attempts to suggest it’s painted digitally. The large wavy element is purposely flexible in what it suggests, either a curious hand reaching out (Like running your hand through grass to feel the environment), or an abstract tree slowly growing towards the sky.

At the moment, these elements aren’t working together, I think it’s the varying thickness of line, and amount of content. It’s busy, and my eye isn’t sure how each element connects with each other. My weakness with artworks is usually when to stop, as I like the idea of being spontaneous and not knowing where the work is going, but this can result in overworking a piece. Alternatively, if it’s too calculated, it ruins the organic process, and the work ends up visually predictable. Especially when the content is nature and the landscape, there needs to be an element of spontaneity to reflect its overwhelming scale, unpredictable growth, and how each plant is unique.

Repainting a section

Here I painted the entire green section with a pastel pattern, with shapes that reflect those in nature. In the end, I didn’t enjoy it! It was too busy, and considering I was suggesting a landscape, the pattern looked like a flat collage piece, which is the opposite of what I’m trying to achieve.

I decided to paint over it again in green, and will either draw a pastel illustration, or just keep it clean.

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The finished piece

The final form! Despite me continuing to overwork the piece, I think it has something to say. It looks like a digital dream of a landscape, but chopped into sections, as if the dream is lost yet these fleeting moments remain. The yellow adds further graphic value, representing spring/summertime suggestive of daffodils, the sun, bees etc.

I don’t think this will go in my space for the final show, but it has given me the technical knowledge to create a more refined idea that is visually more connected with the viewer. I'm thinking of scrapping the comic panel idea, as this added another layer of visual language that only confuses the messaging of the piece. The next piece will be more transparent in depicting a landscape, perhaps using the bottom of the canvas as the horizon line to resemble the skeletal shape of landscape (Ground/sea, and the sky).