"The Red Chair Affair" 24"x36" Framed
I first learned of The Red Chair Project when a local friend emailed to ask me how I mounted my Watercolors to Canvas. He told me he had one he was getting ready for this local project, to benefit the Orpheum Theater downtown. "LIGHTING UP BROADWAY SINCE 1922" is their tab line. Anyway, I wanted to participate as well and began work on my "Red Chair Affair" 24x36 Watercolor, even while knowing it would be a close call to get painting finished in time. My good friends on FaceBook cheered me on at every step, which is literally what pushed me forward!
I first learned of The Red Chair Project when a local friend emailed to ask me how I mounted my Watercolors to Canvas. He told me he had one he was getting ready for this local project, to benefit the Orpheum Theater downtown. "LIGHTING UP BROADWAY SINCE 1922" is their tab line. Anyway, I wanted to participate as well and began work on my "Red Chair Affair" 24x36 Watercolor, even while knowing it would be a close call to get painting finished in time. My good friends on FaceBook cheered me on at every step, which is literally what pushed me forward!
But when beginning the painting I simply jumped in, as I tend to do fairly often. Not much of a planner! Anyway, had just purchased a lovely group of Oriental Lilies earlier that day, so decided to start there. Then, knew I needed at least one red chair in the grouping, so added two, just to be safe! Was fairly well satisfied with this first draft, however, the first thing I noticed was that height of the square container was dwarfing main object of painting . . . namely, the red chair. In setting out to correct this problem at least one means of correction came to mind. Chair legs could be lengthened and run off bottom of painting, thereby giving front chair more height, which would have been fairly easy to accomplish. But I decided instead to add a table top to that particular surface, while cutting down proportions of container itself.
I felt like adding table top worked nicely for entire piece (which was painted with coffee, btw).
So far so good, now for a suitable background. Wanted to start dark, so of course black popped to mind! What else? So, maybe think about giving a slight oriental feeling to the area as well. Red, right, already begun in color format and needing to be carried into other parts of painting as well. So ok, red lines, red markings went in, made with red oil pastel crayons, that my black watercolor would leave in place without running off!
Everything from there was mostly pulling facets of the painting together. I added an upright plate sitting behind lamp base in order to carry some key colors up from the rug, added a brown edging to black area to suggest edge of an Oriental Screen, deepened shading on scarf, lampshade, etc., and gave suggestion of crack in a stucco wall background.
After that was a matter of signing it, mounting onto hardboard, and selecting a frame.
