Melanin Motion

24 in x 24 in,

1/25

This painting is about trying to convey a sense of motion using the palette of human skin complexions. Most of it is an ombre of custom colors made out of burnt umber (dark brown) and unbleached titanium (a buff tan color). I used a sliding triangle arranged from the centerpoint of the canvas, in increments of 5 degrees to fan out the triangles. These became the focal point of the painting, and I filled in the rest with complementary browns and tans - again making several customized colors to carry on the ombre look. For example, the "black" really is Van Dyke Brown, and the inserts in the large Van Dyke Brown triangles are simply Van Dyke Brown mixed with increasing amounts of titanium white. I added impasto to make the piece more interesting. The final section I did was the 4 segments that used liquid acrylics to then drag out lines intended to reference motion.