Growing up in a beach town outside of San Francisco was an amazing experience. I loved walking along the coastal cliffs among the sea plants, as I called them then. The succulents were always amazing to me. I wondered how they grew on the side of cliffs and in the sand. While looking through Mandy’s photos, I came across these beautiful plants she captured on her camera. Number 8 in the series is a close up of one flower from the succulent. I love the contrast of light and dark in this painting. I used the negative space around the flower to bring it to life. The dark and light greens created the differences in colors and shades in the plant. I was able to add a touch of reddish orange to show the tips of the plant.
Number 9 is a farther away version of the many succulents together. I wanted to show the red at the top of the succulents. The subtle yellow of the plants had a beautiful color and reminded me of the sunlight illuminating the plants on the cliffs growing up. I was able to paint 2 flowers in this tiny painting but my main focus was on the intricacies of the lines in the plants. I wanted to show more of the color variations in the succulents and add the warmer colors this time. The red at the tips were darker so I added a bit more cooler colors such as purple to the mixture. This painting has a good balance of cool and warm colors.
Number 10 in the series was a close up of the rocks in the tide pools. I really enjoyed the previous paintings of Number 2 and 3 and wanted to show the muscles on the rocks more closely. The main focus of this painting are the muscles and the sea grass atop the other rocks. The plant life on these rocks were red and yellow at the top and I found this fascinating. The texture was built up with purples, blues, and then bright red with yellow on top. I really enjoyed this series and am grateful to the photographer for such inspiring photos to paint from. If you have any questions, feel free to email me through my contact page.
-Karen Hilliard
