The Red Rock Canyon small works Series 1 is complete! Paintings Number 9 and 10 are both zoomed in versions of the Yucca plants in the desert. Native Americans used these plants for many things. One use of the plants were the fibers in the leaves. For the last 2 paintings I focused on the white fibers historically used to mend and make clothing for native tribes. Each painting has no pencil sketch prior to the paint application so they are very different.
Number 9 was painted using blue and brown mixed together to make a dark shadow color resembling black. I left the white fiber hairs very carefully while covering the surface with the darker colors. When this painting looked like an ink sketch, I started to add olive and hooker green layers to emphasize the leaf sections of the plant. This painting took 4 hours and was challenging as well as fun. My husband bought me a tripod so I was able to make a video showing the process of each painting.
Number 10 is the final piece in the series and I used a similar concept from Number 9. I left the fiber strands white and worked around them with brown and black. In this painting I decided to work the green in each leaf simultaneously with the darker colors. This painting has a lot of layers with three different types of green paint. I also used burnt sienna, and yellow ochre for highlights. These colors created the variants I was hoping for to show the difference in the leaves of the plant.
Making the videos were very fun and also difficult. The tripod was excellent and held the phone perfectly. Painting with a phone in my face, over my work, was different and I had to get used to it. I enjoyed the videos for my Tiny Paintings because they fit the space of the tripod very easily. If you would like to see the videos they are on Instagram. Here is the link: https://www.instagram.com/khilliardart/ I am intrigued to try this video idea with a larger piece. We shall see what happens! I hope you enjoyed these pieces from Red Rock Canyon and the process of the work. Let me know what you think by sending me an email from the Contact page. CLICK HERE -> https://khilliardart.com/contact/
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-Karen Hilliard
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