Fertility

I added the front of the deer’s long nose in primary yellow. I knew a while ago that the color would be there, but I hesitated unsure of the shape. I don’t know why I do that because the shapes are rarely, if ever, premeditated. I connected the large yellow pieces of the antler together and attached it to the deer’s head using cadmium yellow deep hue. Deer are rutting in meadow outside my window, and at dusk they dance across the meadow. I have to drive carefully on the winding roads so as not to run into one.

I also see many small dancing couples around the white figure with the round pregnant belly. Each of their heads are a sincgle color.

Will White Be a Color?

Magenta mixed with white really brightened the whole painting. I begin to think rainforest and that I should use more green. The yellow is what I started with and I feel drawn to complete the color theme I began. As usual the question arises: How much white do I leave? Is white a color in this piece? When the artwork is done I will know it.

Adding Blues

Now comes the challenge of piecing the images together. The yellow is distributed across the canvas evenly with a long arc of primary yellow from the top left to the bottom middle. In the whole sweep I see the outline of a guinea pig head with the dark yellow surrounded by light yellow in the center as the nose, the large yellow circle as the eye. The large yellow circle is also beginning to look like an prehistoric goddess sculpture round and fertile.

I have changed the green mixture to phthalo green (blue shade) and primary yellow, and painted it over each shape. It is almost impossible to see the difference separately, but next to other colors it blends so much better. Phthalo green (blue shade ) and white in various saturations are also spead across the canvas. Ultramarine blue alone and mixed with white is the next layer of color. I know that in theory blues are supposed recede in a painting, but I often paint them as foreground.

Sally Rayn
Dynamic Symbolism