Saturday, May 12, 2007

As Promised

I've been having a bit of a rough week. One of those 'everything that can go wrong' types. But I believe in honoring my commitments, so I wanted to make sure to post my latest watercolor. Unfortunately, the coloring may be way off in this image as compared to the original since I have no real photo editing software to speak of on my laptop.

watercolor 5" x 13"
copyright 2007 Stacy L. Rowan
Available

This is a statue that can be found on the property of Green Hill Farms in Bucks County, PA. The farm was once the home of Pearl S. Buck and now is used to teach people about her work. I took my family members to the farm to tour the Buck house as part of Girls' Weekend. Every GW hostess gives a souvenir to the people who attend her weekend. For my souvenir, I gave each attendee a book by Pearl S. Buck or James Michener (we also visited the James A. Michener museum in Bucks County) and a bookmark. The bookmark was a laminated copy of this painting. (Of course, I reduced the painting when I copied it so it would actually fit inside the book.)

I painted this using my own photo reference which I took in the late afternoon of a beautiful fall day. Unfortunately, I didn't see any sign indicating who made this sculpture so I can't give them credit. If I find out who the sculptor is I will definitely let you know.

The most challenging part of the painting was the group of flowers at the base of the sculpture. Since the stems where the lightest part, I had to employ a technique called negative painting to render this area. Negative painting is painting the areas around an object. In this case, I envisioned where I wanted the stems and leaves to be and then painted the dark background around them. Luckily I had some practice using this technique in graphite when I took a class on Wet Canvas. The class was taught by Mike Sibley who is a pro at negative drawing and all things graphite.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd have thought doing the statue was pretty challenging too. Great job!

Stacy said...

All I said was the flowers were the most challenging part. No comment on whether the rest of it was challenging or not. :D

Robyn Sinclair said...

I agree with Dave, the statue is amazing. How did you get that colour?! I'd love to see a bigger version of this painting so I could appreciate the negative painting around the flowers.
I hope you don't mind, Stacy you have been such a loyal visitor to my blog and I so enjoy your watercolours I have tagged you. You can find out about it on my post:
http://havedogswilltravel.blogspot.com/
2007/05/tagged.html

Mary said...

Stacy, I though it was reference that is beautiful! I didn't know she had lived in PA, I read The Good Earth years ago.

Regula Scheifele said...

Stacy - WOW (!!!) That's absolutely stunning. I'd love to see a bigger version as well, that statue is phantastic. So are the flowers of course... ;-)
Hope this week will be better than last...
Amira

Africantapestry and Myfrenchkitchen said...

A wonderful painting again Stacy. I'm amazed at the shine you got in your statue and you sure did a great job on the flowers. Super work.
Ronell

Stacy said...

Thanks everyone! I've honored your requests and posted some close ups. Robyn I also did my "tag" list. :)

Mary, Pearl Buck moved to PA when she was in her 40s. Much of her life before that was spent in China. I read The Good Earth this year and really enjoyed it.