Monday, August 31, 2009

Corn, corn, corn



My "rural upbringing" is showing again. One of my favorite activities as a girl on my grandparents farm ( besides jumping off the roof of the grain room into the broken bales of hay ) was to run through the rows of corn, slapping the leaves. I don't know what it is about corn but it does seem to grab my attention in any form. Some day I plan to revisit the Indian corn series, but for now I have to do some paintings of the lush fields of corn that are every where here. It was a wonderful spring with the rainfall making up for the drought of the past summers and the farmers are reaping the rewards. I had to stop along the road and take photos of the sun and shadows patterns on the broad leaves and the abstraction of the way the leave overlap and lead in varying directions. This is the first one in what I hope will be series as successful as the Indian corn. I also made an effort to see what greens I could mix. There are a bizillion greens in the world and something special about the greens of a corn leaf. Is it me or as artists are we all dealing with a challenge to mix green ? Or are we confined to what the manufactures are able to make for us? I am determined to find my green without blue dominating the painting. It did creep in here but hey, it's a start.
My sincere apologies to all that posted comments on the past two posts ! It was only when I went to compose this post that I noticed I had comments to monitor. Pryor comments always came to me via email and I'm not sure what happened this time. I just thought everyone was away on vacation and not checking in on me. Thanks again to all !

11 comments:

  1. Janet, I love it! Your greens are fantastic! I find green so hard to do. I really like the composition/crop on this painting love the up close format, your light and shadow are done perfectly!

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  2. Thank you Krista. I always favored olive green (W/N) but was getting a little bored with it esp. having done mostly landscapes. It didn't seem to matter adding blues to get a varity. That's when I decided to see how many different greens I could make on a sample paper to have as reference. Needless to say there aren't enough hours in the day (bizillions)so I settled on a combination of Hookers green with Gamboge (lighter greens) and Perylene green with Gamboge ( darker greens & shadows). Give'm a try & let me know whatya think. Thanks again.

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  3. Hi, Janet. This is so beautiful. I feel like I'm standing in the corn field, engulfed in some enchanted hideaway. What size is this?
    Liz

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  4. Hi Liz ! Thanks ! That's how the corn fields always felt like to me as a kid! I'm so glad the painting made you feel this way too. I'm always forgetting to include the size etc on my blogs ! Thank you for reminding me. It is a full sheet of 140 cold press Arches. As with Lunch Time for Becca, I didn't stretch the paper because I worked in small areas. I was able to flatten it when I finished. I dampened the back and put it under a big sheet of heavy glass.... that had been protecting the coffee table. See you at first Saturday tonight ?

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  5. Hi Janet just noticed your follow, I think you have a lovely variety of greens here which adds a lot of interest to the painting.

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  6. Thanks Sam ! And welcome to the blog. Scan back a few pages to see " Jersey Girl ". You can give me some pointers on painting cows.

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  7. Hi, Janet - thanks for the follow-up..as you can tell, I'm slow on my blog rounds! I didn't make it out this past First Saturday.

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  8. Sorry to be so late to the party, Janet.:( You managed to capture the sun infiltrating the corn rows beautifully! I also love the view you chose. I enjoy close ups(kind of a bug's eye view)as they almost always appear a bit abstract at first glance.

    Greens seem to be the bane of many artists in every medium. I have used perylene green and like the coolness of it but a little tends to go a long way. Smart of you to tone it with an earthy yellow. I really don't like the look of greens right out of the tube.

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  9. Hi Billie ! Party ? Does that mean I have to clean ? crud.

    This really was fun to do. I hope to do more & wish I had taken many more photos. Like I said, there are so many greens to make. I think it will be an exciting way to continue the corn series. My next show will probabaly be reviewed as too "corny".

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  10. I like it a lot, good work Janet. All of your corn paintings are top shelf. I don't have a problem using greens, but mix it up a lot - apparently it is the color people see most differently, so I figure a good variety of them has a better chance of clicking. Growing up in Iowa, I'm familiar with the blue/green of a cornfield.

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  11. Hi Nick
    Thanks ! Yep, a guy from Iowa should know about corn. I still remember driving across Iowa years ago and seeing the endless fields.
    Green has always been a favorite color of mine but this is the first I've made it a subject so to speak. Curious that folks "see" it so differently.

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