Challenge for April, My Favorite Little Piece of a Painting

The challenge is to take a small piece of a painting, and do a new painting based on the small piece.

I visited the Biltmore Conservatory, here in Asheville, and found inspiration, in every direction!

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This painting captured the spirit of the gardens, but I felt

it was too fussy for my taste.

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So I went back to my photo reference and focused on a small area, tightened up my painting and came up with this.

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But wait!  I still had more to say.  I returned to my photo reference, picked up a larger brush, and decided to go abstract.  I started by placing spots of color.  As I painted, it tightened up until it resembled flowers.  I stopped before I said too much.

Which do you prefer?

Carol Schiff
www.CarolSchiffStudio.etsy.com
www.CarolSchiffStudio.blogspot.com

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The painting I chose was more of a seascape than a figurative painting, so I emphasized the child in my new little painting. Below is the original.

Carmen Beecher

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Challenge for April

This was a strange idea for a watercolorist.  I often do several small studies for a large painting, so this was the opposite.  "Dahlias" was painted some years ago and hangs in a friend's bedroom.

For the small painting I chose one flower from the original to paint.  I sent it to my Granddaughter for her birthday as soon as it was photographed.

Mary Warnick


I looked through all of my old paintings and I could not seem to find one that inspired me but I did have an idea.  What if I tried painting one of my collages.  That really intrigued me.  Collages can look like a painting from a distance but when you get closer you see all of the different elements that make up a collage.  You want a painting to be seamless almost effortless the opposite of what a collage is. 

The torn look of lights and shadows are done with different colors of the same paint in the painting. With different colors of the same paper in a collage.

When you look at the painting it is almost jarring.  I did not do the writing but maybe I should have because it adds a lot more to the spirit of the collage than I realized.

donnavinesart@blogspot.com

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Flying Aardvark

Watercolor and Ink
6" x 6"

This image came from a friend's large ink drawing. She cut it up and gave everyone a couple of squares. It was black and white and entirely abstract. This little creature jumped out at me, waiting to be created in color. I love how one can take an abstract image and "see" things to bring out in it. Also, it is a learning experience to look at part of something you created and recreate it in a different way.

Jean Thomas

ozworks22@cfl.rr.com

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I'm still working on this challenge because I'm really slow at calling my acrylics finished. The original is a painting of some beautiful orchids growing in a tree in my brother's yard. It's 20x20 and I started it two years ago and am still not finished playing with it.

I found a section in the lower right corner that I thought would make a good small abstract. Below is the current state of that section painted on a 14x11 art panel.

Kathy Garvey

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Several months ago I posted this finished collage of Majorca. 

My favorite  of this work is the section with the sailboats. In the original, the large sailboat is from the face of a clock and the shadow is a parrot.

In my recent collage of that detail, I used rose petals for the sails, a washed silk dress for the water, an designer dyed alligator handbag for the sand and an excerpt from Leonardo da

Vinci's notebooks for the sky. I love choosing not only the colors and forms for my collages, but 

also using juxtapositioning of surprising and diverse subject matter. 

Fay Picardi