My husband is a popular guy at work, according to a work colleague. He wants to throw a party at our house and I am tasked to make our invite with a graphic of our house. Here’s my step one as I attempt to abstract my watercolor (above).
Our house is surrounded by trees obscuring the view of the house. I want to give a sense of a house being nestled in greenery but my grisaille brush gets texture happy and I end up creating a lot of shadows. Also, the windows look cracked as I drew tree leaf shadows that I didn’t follow through with visual explanations for:
For abstracting nature, I’m tapping into Gaudi and Sagrada Familia, which we visited last month, when we visited Barcelona in 3 days. Gaudi was inspired by nature, as is clearly evident on the spires of Passion Tower (visiting video), where he abstracted fruit:
One particular piece I saw in the Sagrada Familia museum at ground level was his process of abstracting nature into geometric shapes. This simplification makes sense in architecture and elevates reality into a fantasy. So I’m going to take problematic tree on the right hand side and abstract it into a sculptural tree of curved lines.
Like the ears of corn or bananas on the spire above (left), I wanted to introduce some warm colors. After all, it’s for a wellness themed party. So a little sunshine and golden leaves should do the trick.