Doroteja
Every time I painted the girl differently. This time, probably because of the experience, this task went smoothly – I painted it quickly and quite efficiently. Except for the T-shirts that came out too dark to my eyes.
Only later did I remember that the original idea was to convey the girl as one creature with the fish. ‘Well what now,- I told to myself,- neither now nor in the beginning did I know how to do it.’ The only idea I had from the beginning was to add swirls floating around Doroteja that would somehow be very similar to those on the fish. Looking at the image of the girl which was already painted, I had an idea to add the swirls floundering from the hair and from the T-shirts that were like ribbons. I tried to use dim colours, because it already seemed that a lot was going on in the composition.
Unfortunately, I was not satisfied with the result – something was wrong and it was difficult to say what. Nevertheless, I decided not to continue solving this problem but to leave it to Doroteja’s parents to decide which of the six variations of this painting idea is the favourite.
Fishbowl illusion
As I said at the beginning of the first part of this post, I tried to convey the fishbowl opening and the water line as if viewed from below. So when I painted the background, the fish and the girl, I had to finish conveying the illusion of a fishbowl.
Water surface
Until this moment, I was expecting that, when viewing from bellow, the surface of the aquarium water would shine through partially distorted walls and ceilings, just like when looking from above the surface of the water shows a slightly distorted view of the interior of the aquarium. I wanted to see what this surface of water would look like in reality, so I started experimenting with a pot filled with water.
It wasn’t really helpful. Then I thought it would be more useful to look at a glass jar filled with water.
It turns out that when viewed from below, this part reflects the floor or table surface located behind the aquarium, and that reflection is very melted and deformed.
What image could be on the floor behind the Doroteja’s fishbowl? All ideas seemed either boring or too complex to effectively adapt to the existing composition. Because the view in that place distorts so much that the viewer could not make out that this is a reflection of the floor of the room. Therefore, I decided that it would be best if I chose the colours that matched the composition and filled it with marbling painting technique.
Well, I just thought so. In reality, I chose a faster path and painted the surface of the water with a brush. That’s how I saved time, but I regretted it a little bit since it didn’t give a very good effect. Nevertheless, I decided not to fix anything yet, but to wait for the parents to choose their favourite version.
Light reflection
The only detail left to add was the bright reflections of light, which get formed on the illuminated glass. I could paint a round-shaped reflection as if it was a reflection of a lamp bulb. Or I could paint rectangles as if they were a reflection of a window. Another option was to paint the light reflections in unrealistic and painterly manner. In the end, I decided that the numerous round shapes of this composition would well contrasted by rectangular-shaped reflections, which would not necessarily look like a window. That’s how I came up to paint two rectangular streaks.
When I looked at the whole composition, I wasn’t happy with the light streaks. I decided that if Doroteja’s parents were to choose this version as their favourite, I would have to rethink and experiment with different options.
Human reflection
Nevertheless, I was somehow unhappy with the whole composition. It did not seem wholesome and impressive. I decided that the fault lied in the badly executed illusion of the fishbowl. I thought that because I was so struggling to paint the whole painting, I must have been too timid to paint larger and brighter light glass reflections. I blamed myself that if I had painted the light reflections closer to the centre, the composition would have looked more unified .
This is how I started browsing the Internet again for fishbowl photos and tried to see or find inspiration how else I could paint the illusion of an aquarium.
In these fishbowl photos, I saw the lighting in the room being reflected on the glass, and sometimes it seemed that you could almost see the image of the photographer. This is how I came up with the idea that it would be very impressive if a viewer of the painting could see another world reflected on the glass of the fishbowl. It could show a room or people in it. It could reflect the person who is looking at Doroteja with the fish in the fishbowl. Perhaps it could be Doroteja’s parents, or her brother, or maybe a witch. Or maybe even Doroteja herself could be seen in the reflection. Well, ideally, it would be an abstract human figure and so ambiguous that the viewer himself/herself could speculate about what it could be.
From the photos I saw, to convey the reflection of the room with walls and ceilings, in addition to correctly distorted round aquarium glass, would be a very difficult task. I could do it but it would take a lot of time. I decided to somehow greatly simplify that idea, and only if the parents choose this version as a favourite, I could additionally experiment with more complex options.
So I got back to the job – I made bolder highlights around the edges of the oval painting/fishbowl, and I painted another light reflection that would would convey a simple rectangular window and an obscure human silhouette.
The reflection of the window came out quite simple and sometimes it seemed that the silhouette of the ambiguous person associated with a creepy observer. However, I was glad that the whole composition of the painting still improved.
Conclusions
Although, out of 6 version that I made, I sincerely liked this idea and composition the most, I saw that it was not fully and successfully resolved. The white light reflections looked strange, the reflection of the window looked primitive, the water line was clumsy, which covered the aquarium opening and made it no longer obvious that this was a common fishbowl.
If parents chose this version as their favourite, I would still need to make another improved option with acrylic on paper before moving to the final painting with oils on canvas.
