Expression of Cover

The left image is of the sculpture fully lit. There are many opportunities for paintings with the shadows on this one. I chose the bottom middle to start. 

Notes taken directly from my reflection journal, uncut and unedited:

This particular view was more challenging to the first two in this series. The view includes shadows as they transition from the colored wall onto the concrete floor. I found this shadow to contain the potential of being interpreted as animated or figurative. 

I enjoyed the potential symmetry especially that it is not perfect. The zoning I could highlight is tiered and just might break up the canvas in a complex and challenging way beyond the first two paintings. I intentionally cropped the picture so that the floor/wall line horizontally divided the canvas in half. This seemed to me to be a way to simplify the composition which started to loom overly complex in my mind – a fun problem for me to solve via the use of hue and value and translucent layering/glazing. As I got midway through I began to feel there was too much of an overall focus. The shadows on the wall were not very distinct which made wet into wet painting appropriate as a technique, yet it still bothered me. I countered this with accenting the steel rod shadows making the subdivision of the composition more prominent. This did not alleviate the overall feel I saw. I sat and stared at the piece until I envisioned a large, rectangular section through the upper left quadrant and side. It came to me that a yellow glaze would accomplish the highlighting of this for the viewer. Wanting to leave a section of the canvas bare/untouched, I glazed up to and around the edge of the peninsula shaped section between the left lower shadow and the mid shadows. That seemed to be just enough to break the overall or too symmetrical feel to the composition. I then proceeded to do some “invasions” from one zone into the others. In addition to and in reaction to the indistinct shadows I painted a few ovular shadows with colors as if they were traveling across or falling down the canvas. This is related to a solo in music that it plays over the top of the bars and measures/melody and bottom groove or beat. I also began to see how effective painting negative shapes leaving the ground to form the ovals – the opposite of painting the ovals directly on the ground.