In the first post, I briefly described my creative session with children Doroteja (8) and Domas (5). Later, I used the drawings by children, their stories and photographs to create 10 different ideas for a Neverland Portrait. Out of these ideas, the family chose their favourite – Doroteja and Angry Fish. The video below briefly shows the whole story of how this idea came about.
In this and future posts, I will talk about the further development of this idea and its various painterly versions.
I created 6 painting versions for this drawing. After the presentation, the family asked to give them time to think before choosing a favourite. Not long after, they replied that they would like to have ‘Doroteja in a Fishbowl’ as the final painting.
In the meantime, I have purchased a projector so that it would be easier and faster to re-draw or enlarge the compositions.
Since this painting version had a number of significant compositional flaws, I needed to make another improved version with acrylic paint on paper before moving on to the final painting with oils on canvas.
With the help of a projector, I have re-drawn the main details.
The Background and Other Small Changes
I swiftly painted the parts that do not require significant changes – the background, the fish and the girl.
I have only made small changes in some details. On the advice of my former art teachers, I reduced the size of the bottom lip of the fish, painted a dotted texture on its body in order to unify it better with the background, and extended its tail into the distance so that the fish would lose the impression of a non-dangerous toy.
I changed the style of the ribbons that were waving behind the girl: I decided not to add any on the shirt, but instead, on the advice of Doroteja’s mother, I added a few ribbons falling from the girl’s hair. I painted them more vividly and made sure that the arrangement of those ribbons looked effective.
Water Surface of the Fishbowl
In the first painting version of this idea, the water line layered with the opening of the jar and the head of the girl (see photographs above). As a result, the first time the family saw it during the presentation, not everyone realized that this is simply the top part of the fishbowl as viewed from below. I planned to simplify this part so that it wouldn’t seem confusing anymore. However, during the making process, I still compositionally placed the girl’s head in front of the waterline to emphasize the impression that everything – the fishbowl, the water line and the jar opening – is viewed from below.
Then I had the opportunity to come up with a way to convey the surface of the water in a different way. For this I found a decorative round jar at home, which I filled with water and photographed.
While working on the first version of this idea, I had already discovered that what shines through the surface of the water is not the the walls or ceiling, but the reflection of the floor/table behind the aquarium. In this case, it was a better choice for me not to be totally faithful to the laws of the real world, but to paint what would fit well into the rest of the composition. As a result, I decided to paint that part only with the already existing colours of the painting.
All that remained was to decide what texture to convey with these colours. To make things easier, while taking a photo, I placed behind the jar a laptop with a picture of the painting “Doroteja in the Fishbowl” (i.e. the first painting version of this idea). A reflection of the painting formed on the water line. It was as perfect as a mirror.
Unfortunately, for the composition of the painting, it did not seem to me as a good option (the viewer of the painting would probably not understand that it was a surface of the water). So I started taking photos of this part while moving the jar gently. Looking at this photo (on the left side), you could see that this part acquires an obvious water texture. The colours were formed from the reflection of the colours of the computer (black), the background of the painting (blue) and the colours of the fish (blue).
Since in the first painting version the water line was painted in light colours, for this version I decided to use darker colours (just like they were in the above photograph). I hoped that it would optically highlight the dark fish and give the painting a more dangerous atmosphere because I wanted to offset the playfully colourful coral background.
Read the following post to find out how I finished this painting version.
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