Macro Leaf Project

This painting is of an enlarge section of a pine cone. I chose a pinecone over a leaf because it had volume and I felt I could do it better than I could draw a leaf. I used acrylic paint on canvas for my project in order to get more solid colors. For the background I chose orange and yellow and added white to make them very light. There is a lot of line and shape included in my work with the pieces of the pinecone and the cracks in the pine cone.

The composition rules and techniques that I see in my painting are sharp focus and informal balance. There are more pieces of pine cones touching the left side of the border than the right making the painting unbalanced. My lines and outlines of the pine cone make it look more focused in the space. When I was first painting this I used pen to outline everything, but ended up repainting areas and decided to redo the lines with black paint. I also decided to outline the cracks in the pine cone with black while redoing the original lines. Then for the background I couldn't chose between bright yellow and bright orange because they were both fall colors and would contrast nicely with the dark pine cone. Because of this I did an ombre between the two for the background.

I like doing tinier paintings so that's what I did for this. Because of this, the border is very large so I would go back and trim it down to make it look like it fit better with the painting.