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negative space, balance, and madras color

My Series 4 - digital painting / art prints - Dan Beck 2005

This isn’t one of my favorites in this series - but more because it is a little obvious for me. The series is about the line between representation and abstraction - but this piece is clearly mountainous and therefore wasn’t quite as successful.

On the other hand, it is pleasing to look at and reads well. The negative space is particularly strong and despite the strong mountain image - it is light - built almost like a sculpture whose base seems too light for the weight of the piece.

What are holding these mountains up? And why are they wearing a madras shirt?

See Also

• d’gallery
  when searching for sculptures and balance - this artist - Michelle Farrell - came up - three nice pieces - good space- good form - worth checking out
• SpaceMain
  simple discussion of space, negative space and form - sometimes simple says more
• My Series 4
  view art print options for the above piece

Adding color, texture, adjusting composition for balance

At this point in the piece there is more color added to all the fields in the foreground, giving them more solidity and believability.  The sky has been filled in using a gradient blue and some texture has been added to the strip of land behind.

This next phase of the piece has more color and texture added to the foreground hills and the shape of the green mountain in the rear has been altered slightly to make a nicer flow.

The main additional ingredient here is the additional shrubs and trees.  It felt sparse as compared with the original scene and also seemed necessary for the aesthetic balance of the painting.

See Also

• Compositon and Design Principles
  Touches on a number of things which can be important in whether art works
• Creating Rich and Beautiful Texture Art
  Discussion of ways of creating texture
• Composition and Design: Understanding it - Using it
  Discussion of composition theory and practice
• eDigitalPhoto: Creating Digital Works of Art
  Tangentally related - adding texture to digital photographs