Thursday, March 26, 2009

The Glass Blowers Garage

The Garage
18 x 12 soft pastels on Wallis Professional White
by Miki Willa
I took the reference photo for this during a recent visit to Viscosity, south of Seattle. Once again, I was intrigued by the geometric shapes and the colors. This particular garage has two openings, but I chose to only do the one on the right because it had a piece of glass parked there. I decided to use a vertical format to stretch the image and give it more interest. I really like the abstract quality that came through in this format. I worked primarily in Ludwig dark purples, reds, and the grays. I also used some Nupastel reds and oranges. The ochres on the glass are Great American. The yellows and golds in the background bricks are a mixture of Ludwig and Great American. I adjusted colors and values as I went which worked out well. My next painting in this series will have a glass blower at work. This will be a challenge for me as I don't normally do figure paintings. Stay tuned for that in a few days.
The glass blowing garage is a place for the glass artist to park pieces he/she doesn't want to cool down, but has to leave for a while. One example of how these are used is when you create a goblet with a stem, bowl, and foot. The separate pieces are parked in the garage until it is time to assemble everything. In the above case, the glass artist was not finished with the process for making a sphere, but needed to take a lunch break. Just amazing what you learn when you hang around artists who work with a different medium than your own.

1 comment:

Tom Willa said...

Very Seattle painting. I like it a lot. One reason is because the warmth of the yellow colors inside the garage are so in the background. You managed to build shapes, values and overlapping so that they emphasize that back wall is deep inside and has the intensity of heat to keep the glass blowers project hot. Warm and cool colors have become one my latest obsessions you have handled them with great success in this painting!