My main inspiration for this piece was Georgia O'Keeffe. I was very much inspired by her watercolors. I love the way the pieces are so loose with form and very organic. I wanted to mimic this loose form feeling in my figure. My figure is a representation of the Anjali Mudra or Prayer Pose. The Anjali Mudra is a powerful pose and symbol of prayer in yoga. It's meant to bring you back to your heart and often done before sun salutations, in Tadasana or mountain pose, and Vrksasana or Tree Pose. I wanted to illustrate my depiction of this pose using the style of Georgia O'Keeffe.
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When I first started to plan this piece I derived my inspiration from how I felt when being in my Anjali Mudras during my yoga practice. I wanted to visually represent a connection of body and sprit. O'Keeffe's style captured the style but I knew I wanted a loose watercolor type form of a figure in blue and light blue in prayer pose. I knew I also wanted to have a hatch opening from the top of the head like a cellar door, releasing butterflies. I wanted this to represent freeing your mind and the experience of that prayer to devotion with butterflies escaping from a door that's opened with the practice.
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My first sketches were very crude and I used them to get a sense of hand posture and what parts of the body I wanted included in the frame. The sketch on the left was too zoomed out and I wanted the head and hands to fill more of the piece. The right sketch has a rectangle sketched around where I envisioned the frame of the painting being.
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I started with the shoulders and used lots of white and light blue to keep the front of the shoulders lighter then the muscle and neck. I then used very light colors to paint the pinkies and wrists, progressively getting darker as I went back to the other fingers and knuckles. After I had the lower body, I moved on to the head
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I knew that I wanted there to be a bright light coming from the contact with the crown of the head getting darker as it went out to edges. Meant to illustrate opening further and the opening of your crown chakra. This also helped give it shape and depth. I left the space for the door blank and transitioned into the browns.
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Similarities
- Both use very simple form with organic edges and lack of rigidity - Both pieces use watery coloring and have an inconsistent shade and color - Both pieces use water to help blend the different colors into smooth connections Differences - My piece has a distinct human form while O'Keeffe's is very abstract - My piece is more detailed and the inspiration is much similar in composition - My piece includes more layered elements where as the main element of O'Keeffe's is more of a landscape and scenic |