This is yet another post about my art, but perhaps the last for awhile.
There’s a few things I’d like to clarify, based on some of the questions and comments I’ve had recently on various social media. Much of this ties in with what I’ve said many times, “A lot of my art is done with leaves. Also, I paint with light.”
The best way to show this is with a few pictures. The first one is a very simple example of how I begin several of my projects . . . with a scan of a leaf or leaves, as shown below, on the left. Next to it you can see how I drew over part of the veins of the leaf . . . selectively. I do this on screen, rough at first, but then with a lot of smoothing, as seen in the right picture. There are several other adjustments to follow, such as reshaping, not to mention color.
A simple example of using leaves as a base for my art.
The Leaves Become My Canvas
The next example is much more involved. It begins with a group of fall leaves. I lay them out on my scanner with a little thought paid to composition – but not too much – so it is not quite random. Because of this, it may take two or three tries before I’m satisfied with how the leaves look on-screen. It’s mostly an intuitive process.
After that I may work with the entire scanned image, but more likely I’ll just use a small, cropped portion, and then enlarge it. In this case I’ve done a series of cropped sections. Put another way, now I have three very different scans. Each one becomes “my blank canvas that really isn’t blank.” – after studying this image for a minute or two, I’ll start sketching, based on whatever has caught my eye.
Now here are those three images I’ve been talking about. “A” refers to the main scan (1st one), while “B” is part of the middle region in”A”. In turn, “C” is the bottom left part of “B”.
One scan of leaves, but three different “blank canvases”!
How the Picture at the Top of this Post Came to “B”
From there it really becomes an adventure. With no preconception of what I will find, I have full confidence that something exciting and intriguing will show up. It almost always does! So it often feels more like a discovery than a creation, as if the picture or story is waiting there to be drawn. Perhaps that’s a different way of interpreting one’s muses? I like to think so.
Take image “B” for example. I’m showing it here again, but this time with a mauve rectangular inset that shows what was to become a series of pictures, only one of which has been published.
Image “B” within an inset that shows the base of a series of paintings.
Now here are the pictures that came of this inset – for most of these, there are dozens of renditions done to get to what you see here. These remain untitled as they are still considered works in progress:
The first in this series, chronologically.
Second in the series.
Third in the series.
Fourth in the series.
Now here is the last in this series. This is a version of the published picture, called, “Troubled”. If you click on this image, you will be taken to the final version of “Troubled” on my site.
The last in this series, so far.
“Rita’s Vision” is There Too . . . “C”
Thank you bearing with me so far. Now I’m going to show you what came out of the smallest cropping – image “C” from above. I’m showing it again here, rotated to match the picture that became of it. That picture follows right after – it’s my newly released piece called “Rita’s Vision”. Once again, clicking the image takes you to my site:
Image “C” from above, rotated 90 degrees.
That’s enough for now. I intended to discuss the issue of how long it takes to make my creations. Given how I do things, that’s not always an easy question, so it looks like I’ll be doing one more style-related post, but it will be much shorter than this one.
lawrence grodecki 