Little Steps Poster ©Felipe Adan Lerma
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/little-steps-poster-felipe-adan-lerma.html

A Path Forward, watercolor on absorbent ground
This one, A Path Forward, is more a ”mess” than Fall Color 1 watercolor, done about 5 days ago, lol! But I do like it! 😊

It’s a very loosely “translated”, as Diane Mize describes it in Translating, Transposing and Inventing: That’s What Artists Do! – meaning my Mountain Road photo reference below provided a loose non-realistic reference point.

And there was a point, decades ago, I finally realized I had this tug-a-war going on within me : translate an image to paint (realistically faithful to the photo or plein air scene), or go abstract, usually way abstract 😊

Diane, in her article above, describes the transposing range as mild to severe, and my ranged the gamut, with a few totally “invented” images along the way – here, and here are good examples from the 80s ☺️

In the 2000s I opted for an impressionist version of transposing, both to give my work continuity, and to please myself, as I’d determined that form of art was my favorite, and still today is strongly placed in my heart ❤️ The works I sold at a Veterans Art show being good examples.

What I think I’ve come to now, twenty years after my 1st impressionist attempts, and thirty to forty years after my various acrylic works in Galveston, is, with the small pieces I’ve been working on since late last year, watercolors on absorbent ground, most on 6x6s canvases, is a possibly satisfying rotation between figurative white line work (a mix of translating and transposing) on black absorbent ground, and work a bit closer to a mix of transposing and inventing, with work like A Path Forward below, and Fall Color 1 Watercolor a few days back.

And I think the figurative work on transparent absorbent ground over black gesso probably fits into that latter category too, and I’ll be doing more like that very soon.

And somewhere in all that flowers will also appear time to time 💐

My original photo, you can tell, is a beauty of happy timing all in itself. Plus from one of my favorite places to visit (hopefully again some day 😊) – Stowe, Vermont.

I’d digitally faded the edges, I think with some sort of “vintage” filter, and decided I very much liked the idea for the painting also, tried it, and think it works pretty nicely!

I like the softening almost nostalgic effect it gives the art!

Tomorrow I should be able to post my 3rd in a row similar to The Path Forward and Fall Color 1, a painting I worked on today, but am unsure if it’s totally done. Like the painting in this post, it’s “translated” from an image, this one being a photo from when Sheila and I spent 5 1/2 weeks in Paris back in late 2020 💕 I’m calling it, A Walk in Paris With a View of the Eiffel Tower.

While The Path Forward reminds me of the fauvists (particularly Matisse and Derain), the Paris work reminds me of Utrillo, esp his Eiffel Tower painting (at bottom of linked to page).

Not exactly of course. And not intentionally, or consciously.

I just painted, the two images (The Path Forward), and today’s Paris Walk (hope to post tomorrow), and when done, that’s what they reminded me of. Interesting, I think, how intimately we are connected to all the art before us! We absorb it, and it mixes inside us, often times unaware when or how it’ll manifest!

There’s one last detail about The Path Forward I thought interesting I wanted to share.

The white circled dark dash just right of mid center in the painting, was the last thing I placed and convinced me the work was finished; other than actually also signing it 😊

Somehow, the work felt too – I haven’t been able to find quite the right word – but like the colors and shapes were too suspended, and my “looking” at it was anchored. I studied the original photo, and saw there was a shadow that continued under (in the photo) the highlight in the path/road into the distance.

Once I set the dash, the whole painting came into focus for me. Weird, huh?

But it felt right. So I “declared” it done, lol 😊

Take care everyone! Stay well, stay safe!
Transform, mutate, create what is in you! ❤️

Adan

*

Series link – Aging Through Covid-19

Do you have good, positive, useful or encouraging info to share? Please post in the moderated comments below 😊

My Related Amazon Affiliate Search Products
https://www.amazon.com/shop/felipeadanlerma

My Related Posts Here On My Blog

My Latest Posts On My Website!

• October 17, 2021 – My Most Viewed Image For a 2nd Week @FineArtAmerica, Abstract Study 1, #watercolorOctober 17, 2021
  Though I’ve had some of my images repeat a 2nd week or more, or return again after awhile to place top of my views for the week at Fine Art America, it’s still rare for an abstract of mine to do so. It’s sorta ironic for me, since I began painting in earnest in the 80s creating acrylic abstracts (after fooling around doing clouds and Dali-ish dripping clocks in my 20s 😊), and then….
• October 16, 2021 – My Idea for Promoting My WordPress Blog Posts on Twitter (Besides My Pinned Tweet), Part 2October 16, 2021
  Knowing me, I doubt this’ll be my final tweet format I can use on Twitter to let folks see & know what my most recent blog posts are. I of course tweet the individual blog posts themselves out, often using them here in my posts. But I felt the need for a more inclusive, easy to change to keep up-to-date format and after some earlier incarnations, this tweet above may work for me for awhile, changing the screen shot of my current blogs as needed 😊
• October 15, 2021 – 2nd Time Out Sketching with Austin’s #UrbanSketchers Group! Still a Treat! #PeaseParkOctober 15, 2021
  Though immensely more challenging this time around for October’s outting with Austin’s Urban Sketchers chapter (heat indexes near 100 – hopefully a forerunner to an expected cool front; traffic challenges due to Austin City Limits festival), and, not particularly enamored with my resultant efforts this time around — — it was so good to talk with other artists! Be out among so many folks and families, and, “try” my 2nd time out painting plein air since (I think) the early 2000s!
• October 14, 2021 – My Idea for Promoting My WordPress Blog Posts on Twitter (Besides My Pinned Tweet), Part 1October 14, 2021
  I have my pinned tweet on my Twitter timeline of course, where I show images of my work on Fine Art America, with link to my site there of course, and, also list my blog site here on WordPress. But as you can tell above, the latter, my WordPress website, gets not that much focus. Though if you’d like to retweet it, please do, lol! 😊 So basically, I asked myself, how – beyond a 2 short lines in the text – can I better promote my WordPress site, along with my Fine Art America site?
• October 13, 2021 – A Good Problem, Lots of Interesting Pics and Posts Developing in My Blog Pipeline! Part 2October 13, 2021
  Recently I posted 3 other canvas paintings I’ve been working on, and here I’m showing the 2 I’d mentioned in that post but didn’t have photo captures of yet. Both are 18×24 on canvas, with light molding paste from Golden, but, at this stage applied slightly differently.
• October 12, 2021 – Reblog/Review : Long Covid Presentation with Patrick McKeown (YouTube)October 12, 2021
  My biggest take away from Patrick McKeown’s hour and a half YouTube presentation (a recorded Zoom session) is how gentle and doable it can be for most of us to go as slow as we need, and we’ll get there – “there” being better easier healthier breathing and as a result, the potential for a happier better life.
• October 11, 2021 – A Good Problem, Lots of Interesting Pics and Posts Developing in My Blog Pipeline! Part 1October 11, 2021
  And the 3 images above do not include 2 more 18×24 semi-abstract semi-figure works, lol! Which is great for my painting and fitness interests, but leaving me a tiny bit in the lurch blogging-time wise – but – with a wealth of new material, well, materializing 😊 It’s my intent to have a blog post for each of these images here plus the two not shown 🤞

*
Thanks again, everyone! 😊

Adan

Twitter / Instagram / FB @FelipeAdanLerma
Amazon Author Page – https://amzn.to/2YpgyUf
Fine Art America (FAA) – https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/felipeadan-lerma.html