The work I'm posting today was another present. This one went to my youngest sister, Jessi, for Christmas. It's interesting... when you tell people you're painting a present for someone the response I get is generally "When do I get a painting?!"
So my list of presents has grown. It's just a question of what and how. My other sister likes Americana and I have some ideas as to what to create for her... something red, white and blue with stars and stripes but with an aged and weathered look to it. It bears thought.
In the meantime, this is what I created for Jess.
Jess loves purple. So I did the background in varying layers of tone. It makes the background more interesting instead of a solid color block and this is a fairly simple painting so I wanted some variety of texture.
The branches I added deeper and more vibrant color as lowlights. With the background being a shade of purple that skies are usually not, I went with a similar theme with the coloring of the branches.
The cherry blossoms I kept as simple as possible. I thought it was a more interesting counterpoint to the textures of the background and the branches. Too much detail made it all look way too busy. I did attempt to add detail to the blossoms but it just made everything feel weighted down. The plain pink gives it a graphic touch and I like the way it turned out. Plus, I was able to add some visual interest with the splatter effects in the same pink (watered down a great deal.)
This was a tempting painting in that I kind of wanted to keep it for myself once I was done with it. I had an idea of what I wanted to create and this did not skew very far from that so I was particularly pleased with that.
A success.
