impossible design
Unitiled - 30 x 40, acrylic on canvas
Staying with my Reutersvard inspired impossible repeating design, this is the newest painting in the series. It's the largest of this theme, at 30 x 40 inches. It's also one of the most symmetrical, as far as the distances between the "caps". This was designed with a 1:2 ratio, which creates a very structured look. I hope you enjoy it!
Last weekend I started a new painting based off of the impossible designs of Oscar Reutervard. This is one of the first paintings that I've created using my own "impossible design". My process began with an initial sketch (not pictured), and then I moved on to recreating the design on the computer (pictured). As well as this type of drawing really messing with my head while I tried to conceive it, the biggest step was figuring out the scale of the grid in order to produce the design for the canvas dimensions (in this case 24" x 48"). After that was determined, I carefully drew the grid and design onto the canvas(pictured). The next step was choosing the color scheme, in this case I chose a complementary scheme using mustard and plum, and decided on an airy dulled out blue to give the impression of a sky and depth, while keeping the color flat in order to not detract from the foreground design.
For those of you not familiar with Reutervard's work, I strayed slightly from what I have determined to be his "rules". From what I have seen of his work, he never allows his drawings to show more than three surface planes, meaning every plane of every object in his drawings live in the scene together on these planes. By inverting the two objects, I have purposely created a fourth plane... I like to break the rules a little and see what happens. If you look at the painting as two separate designs, they individually abide by this three plane rule. But, if you look at it as a whole, I used four. They each have a left and right plane. The mustard design has a bottom plane but, no top. While the plum design has a top plane but, no bottom. Does that make sense?
Also, I realize these pictures are not of the highest quality. I like to take process pictures with my phone while I progress through a painting, specifically for this blog. I'll have some higher resolution pictures added to my gallery at the end of this week.
I hope this little insight has been helpful.
-Steve
