I am working on a painting for an upcoming art show with Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" as it's theme. On May 22, I started working on the layout, sketching on the canvas with graphite (always a nightmare). This quotation from the play is the basis for the painting: "I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine." I am laying out this quotation around the four edges of the painting, which will be painted to look like a frame. Within the frame are six rectangles, one for each of the six flowering plants mentioned in the poem: wild thyme, oxlips, nodding violets, woodbine, musk-roses, and eglantine. Inside each of the rectangles I am going to paint the plants (as labeled), but in the style of a botanical illustration. (There are a lot of plants in Shakespeare, and lots of people have written on the subject. There are even books on botany and Shakespeare.) This sketch is still very rough, including the lettering, which is hard to read. At this point, I was just trying to set up the composition. To be continued. . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment