Red and White is a Dynamic Combo of Color.
We spent a week in Copenhagen. As always, I like to paint one of the Masters while I am in a country. This time in Denmark, I was very inspired by Red and White, which are the colors of the Danish flag. “To Denmark with Love, Babaji,” came to mind. I am not a nationalistic person, but I do like the graphic simplicity of flags, and the colors that are used in these iconic symbols that represent nations. ??
OK. I started with a red ground. Then sketched in the basics with a few strokes of darker red and white. Sometimes I take photos right away, because I can see what to do next from the pic on my iPhone. I make adjustments. In this case, the eyes were about a centimeter too high. So I painted them out and moved them down about one centimeter. This may not seem like a big deal, but sometimes a feature just a little off in the beginning can make the whole painting very off in the end. So I corrected this, before committing myself any further.
Once this was done, I proceeded on with a few more strokes of dark violet and maroon in the hair and eyebrows. I put in the white chundun (in real life, strokes of sandalwood paste placed on the forehead.) And, I painted in the eyes.
Much of of the work is now done, and the rest of my actions are just fine tuning. Sondra usually makes a comment, and in most cases I follow her suggestions. She felt the white chundun was too much of a distraction from the overall face. So I decided to make it day-glow pink.
In the final version of Babaji of Denmark I could get the feeling that this young Babaji would get the approval of my readers. I threw it up and Facebook and got these comments:
Birgitte Hjort Not easy to paint a picture in so few colours, but you can do it Markus!
Interesting how much the violet in a few places in the painting add to the balance and the expression
and
Ali Ames Orci Beautiful!
To Denmark With Love, BABAJI @!
