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.
As I said in the post Preparation and Idea Generation for a Painting ‘Doroteja and Angry Fish‘, I painted the initial ideas on small format (A5) sheets of paper with watercolours. The first ideas were Doroteja and Angry Fish in the Sky, Doroteja and Angry Fish in a Vortex, Doroteja and Angry Fish Underwater, Doroteja and Angry Fish in Crystal Oval and Doroteja and Angry Fish on Waves.
The last idea was to convey Doroteja with the fish under water surrounded by corals. (About where this idea came from, read in the following post.) I made three sketches with watercolours for this idea in order to decide which composition is most effective.
However, in the creative process, this idea has turned into something else. After painting the past painting versions of this project, I asked my friends their opinion. One friend (we studied together at university) saw similarities between these works and my paintings of the past. One of my graduation paintings had a fishbowl motif, so she suggested that Doroteja could be in a fishbowl with the fish. It’s as if Doroteja’s parents would be watching over their girl just like people watch their fish-pet in a fishbowl. In addition, the girl and the fish could be one whole creature. It sounded like a very impressive idea.
All previous versions of this painting were in a vertical oval frame. For this composition, all I had to do was turn the oval into a horizontal position and create the illusion of a round glass aquarium with painting techniques. For this, it was necessary for me to learn exactly what a round aquarium looks like.
Since the whole painting should look like a round glass bowl, I wondered if it would be necessary to cut the top of the oval frame. I decided not to, because in such case it would be quite difficult to construct a frame and stretch a canvas over it, and the shape of the painting itself would no longer look so pleasing to the eye. Instead, I kept the shape of the painting as a perfect oval and conveyed the illusion of a round fishbowl in a playfully distorted manner. That was my first sketch (drawn on A1 format paper).
I had the idea to paint the aquarium as if viewed from below, so that both the jar opening and the water line would be seen as if from below. This way, it was easy for me to convey the shape of the fishbowl in an oval frame without overly pronounced distortions.
Background
As I mentioned before, this idea was originally about Doroteja being surrounded by corals. In addition, when the theme changed to “Doroteja in the Fishbowl”, I still used the texture and colours of corals to convey the environment of the aquarium.
I created the composition, colours and texture inspired by my past painting. (You will learn more about this in one of the following posts). Coloured “bubbles” were created by stamping with a bubble wrap.
Fish
Since the fish was pale in the last painting version, for the sake of variation I decided here to paint it dark.
Back then, I didn’t think much about what effect each variation would create. For me, it was more useful to firstly create all versions and then deal with everything when it’s in front of my eyes – which variation is best or which requires only adjustments. In addition, from all versions, the family could choose not necessarily a favourite painting, but favourite details from multiple paintings.
In order to decide how to paint a dark fish, I took inspiration from the Internet again.
Then I practiced on a small format how I could apply these colours to Doroteja’s fish.
From these experiments I decided to paint the fish mainly black with a soft transition to dark blue. And the swirls themselves would be rendered vaguely like ghosts.
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