Rosa Damascena. Acrylic on 36×36″ wood panel
Above – ‘Damascus Rose 1’ – inspired by Syrian tile designs, and the history of Rosa Damascena – the rose produced in Syria which is developed into rose absolute (currently not in production due to the war in Syria). And ‘Damascus Rose 2’ – loosely based on a map of Damascus from above.
Some details below..
Bitumen-like texture – salt and black paint
Side view (paint still wet in this one)
Today’s painting of a loch in Coigach near Achiltibuie in the North West of Scotland. (I was visiting friends there before the trip to the Hebrides with poet Louise Palfreyman).
Also (below) the base for ‘Damascus Rose 2’, next in the series of three. I’ll be blocking out lines to reflect a map of Damascus, then overlaying with textured black and removing the blocking to reveal these tones underneath, though I can see other possibilities in this, and see the vague figures of a horse and two figures crossing a plain in sunset, but I’ll stick to the plan hopefully –
The highly textured look of the Achiltibuie landscape at the top of this post is due to using my palette as the base – something I do quite often since I usually paint on wood, so I’ll use a spare wood panel as a palette, then if it starts to look interesting I’ll work on bringing out a painting from it. Here’s another one I did last year which remained semi abstract…
‘East Coast’. Mixed media on 10×10″ wood panel
And two photos of my palettes from today …
Someone posted a link to ‘famous artist’s paint palettes’ on facebook the other day – (http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/05/paint-palette-portraits-matthias-schaller/ ) so I amused myself by trying to guess which artist each palette belonged to, here they are, have a guess! (artist’s names below the images at the end of this post) …
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Rose Strang Artworks 