Speaking of Art Blog

Milkweed Plus 2, pastel, 14x11"

This is my latest painting, of a butterfly and a moth on a milkweed flower.  Right now, in prairies and gardens in the upper Midwest, milkweed plants are in their heyday and they attract a lot of butterflies and moths.  This butterfly is called a Giant Swallowtail and the moth is called, believe it or not, a Confused Haploa moth.  I did some research as to the origin of the moth’s label and I came to find out that this particular moth is hard to distinguish from some other kind of Haploa moth, so some scientist decided to call it a Confused Haploa because of its identity confusion.  Hmm, were we not feeling very creative with moth names that day?

When I finished the painting, I was trying to incorporate the word – confused - into my painting title, but then thought better of it.  That would just be….confusing.  Besides, the moth is not confused, just the humans who are trying to figure out which kind of Haploa moth it is.

Anyway, I started thinking about how confusing some concepts in the color world can be also.  Like the fact that while the milkweed flower has a lot of stunning colors in the red-violet family, its most prominent color is a sort of grayish mauve color, a nothing dead looking color, if you will.  BUT if I were to leave out all those grayish toned tiny blossoms in that big flower ball, those remaining bright red and violet petals would not stand out nearly as well.  They would lose their luster because those softer gray-whites would not be there to provide the contrast.  Oh, and do you know how many different colors of off-white I was using on those tiny grayish blooms?  I counted 12 different color pastel pencils that I was using interchangeably.  That’s a lot of shades of light gray, and not a single one came out of my jar of what I would call gray pastel pencils.  They were all grayed down versions of other colors, like gray-pink and gray-cream and gray-lavender.  Would plain old light gray have worked?  Nope, I tried it.  Bleh.  Why didn’t gray work?  Not interesting enough maybe?  I’m not really sure.  Confusing.

Another confusing color concept is that if I want both white wings on the moth to still read as white but have one wing look like it’s in shadow, all I have to do is softly stroke some pale blue on top of white to make that one wing look like it’s receding into shadow.  What about a light blue-green instead of blue?  Would that work just as well?  No, light blue works best.  But why won’t light blue-green work?  I’m not completely sure why not, but when I experimented with various shades of off-white, the light blue worked best, so I went with success.  Maybe the green part of blue-green was just a tad too warm to recede nicely in that particular situation.  It worked great for the body of the moth in partial shadow, but not its wing.  Confusing.

Every single situation, every single individual section of a painting is a new set of dilemmas to be solved when it comes to color.  Yes, some overall color principles apply, like how IN GENERAL warm colors jump forward while cool colors recede.  But sometimes depending on what is right next to one colored shape, that rule cannot be applied without new problems erupting.  It’s all relative to what the context is for each shape and color and the amount and shade of a color.

Experimentation is key.  I allow myself plenty of time to play when I work on a painting.  I know, that sounds like an oxymoron – time to PLAY when I WORK on a painting.  But it’s absolutely true.  Confusion rears its head from beginning to end because general rules don’t always apply.  Trying things and letting myself fail are all part of the creative process.  Thank goodness pastels are very forgiving.  And so are butterflies and moths as they wait patiently for me to create them.  Even the Confused Haploa moth was patient with me as I created it.  All I had to remember was that I was the confused one, not the moth, LOL.