PICK OF THIS WEEK - 2017
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Week #31
This work was done by Carmel Cucinotta-Harmon
this year in New Orleans for the session “Pressurized and Drawn Romans” in 26 Seeds: a Year to Grow. In her own words:
The inspiration for this piece was our garden. It was in full bloom, and as I took in the beauty I knew I had to do a piece on flowers and nature. The quote is from Ralph W. Emerson.

For this piece I had a difficult time deciding on a layout. Actually, I did not like anything I came up with. The only thing I knew was that I wanted flowers at the bottom of the piece. So, this is where I began. I worked from the bottom up; something I have never done before.

After spray fixing the black paper, I began using colored pencils to draw in the flowers (which took forever!). I made a transparency of my pencil drawn letters from my exemplar and began tracing the words on the black paper. My first word was “flowers”. I did not trace the word ‘in’, as I did not like the way it looked (using the transparency). I left space for the word “in”. I continued up the line. When all words were traced in, I under painted them with Acrylic paint mixed with a Matte Medium. I chose the color blue green because I love this color.
I had to lighten it from the pure hue because it was too dark to show upon the black paper. Painting the letters was very slow and tedious. I could only paint two letters at a time before taking a much needed break.

I still had to figure out what to do about the word “in”. Since it was in between “laughs and flowers” I needed something about “earth” to tie everything together. I decided to draw a little bug for the “i” and a bean plant turned upside down for the “n”. This is what I wanted.

Now I had to figure out what to put at the top of the piece. Originally I wanted more flowers. I decided that would be overkill. I needed something. I chose a little butterfly and a single tiny flower looking down over the piece. They are also done in colored pencils.

One thing I have learned is this... it is a good idea to take a photo of the layout prior to actually painting etc. The photo, for some reason, emphasizes mistakes that the human eye can miss.

I had fun working on this homework. It was very arduous and time consuming. I had such inspiration from my husband’s garden that it turned out to be very rewarding in the end.

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You can enjoy all the Pics of the Week from 2009 through 2018,
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