Lose yourself in your art

I love to paint.
I love the research at the beginning and the conceptual building.  I love the way canvas feels in my hands and the smell of the artist paints.  In art school when I used artist oil's...  I'd get inspired by the smells.  I know; for some people...it's the smell of certain foods or coffee....  For me;  it's the smell of linseed oil.

I received a commission to create a woodland fairytale theme for a 16 year old girl's bedroom.  It was an interesting shaped room in that half of it was drywall and paintable and the other half was slatted wood and windows.  Also, one of the walls was 16' high.  I do love a good challenge!  She handed me a tiny xerox of a Kinkade painting and asked me to create something that looked like that.  Now I had direction and my imagination was off and running.

I wanted a sky but not a blue sky and I wanted to depict a bright sunny day in the springtime where the sunlight was everywhere but diffused as if through summer morning haze....So I just painted a soft white hue...just one solid color.  From there, I built up my tree canopy in lavender silhouettes.  But because the wall was so tall; each leaf of the branches had to be rendered so I used the side of a 3" brush to create the impressionistic shape.

I had a lot of wall space to cover and needed to create a dense forest, so I used layers of color to create silhouetted trees and the side of the brush to give the impression of foreground foliage.  It's important not to get too hung up in the background detail because the foreground is always where you want your focus energy to be.  You want to draw the viewer in and let their imaginations travel deeper into your art.

One of my favorite parts of this whole painting happened quite by accident (as it always does).  I was creating the depth I needed in the tree canopy and layering warm and cool colors next to each other to achieve the illusion of light and shadow.  I was using a soft lavender for the foliage highlights and deep sage and hunter greens for the deeper parts of the forest....and it just happened.  I fell in love with the Monet-like art that I created from my brush.  It was a really cool experience....and my favorite part of this giant painting.  

There are always functional elements of indoor mural art (doors, light switches, wall speakers, etc.,) that just get in the way of your creativity.  I really try to not let these little functional aspects of life get me down...so....I incorporate them into the art work as best I can.  Paint over them but make sure that they can still operate.  Who said that a vent cover or light switch HAS TO stay white?  Preposterous!  If it's in the way it must become art.

That said;  I also painted right over the back of the door that leads out of the bedroom.   I'll give you a better shot... try to locate the door handle, door frame, light switch and room speaker - with this link to my site:  http://www.coggart.com/kkd8.html)

Now the art was taking shape and I was just having fun with details and hiding things.  It was time to focus on the little stream and tiny details.  I feel that it's the little details that make art fun and turn 'on' that child inside us all.  I enjoy getting lost in the creation process and I feel that if I lose myself in making the art...then perhaps the viewer will too when they can almost feel the sunlight on their shoulders and the cool of the grass at their feet.