Painting Experiment

This was a fun painting experiment to see how feasible it would be to create a very basic, crude “stop motion” style animation by painting a series of similar living objects and then putting the video together as one. To make this video truly incredible, I would have had to paint probably 100 different versions of each painting, to show all of the steps in each transition. Obviously I wasn’t committed to doing that!

But, this quick method of painting an illusion of a flower coming to life was emotionally satisfying, especially when set to music. The motion of watching the paintbrush move creates a life of its own, so this is really a whole new type of animation. I’m happy with the effect and, now that I see how well it works, I’d like to try it again in the future with something more complicated and detailed.

I love inventing new methods for how I do things, and experimenting with ideas. To save time and cost, I painted on tiny square canvases for this project, which made the effort a bit tedious. I used fine detail brushes and felt very constrained. I had a headache when done, as I couldn’t freely paint in my usual style and had to stay so tightly on task. But, it was the right decision because I wanted to fit this little game in between other projects I’m doing. As a working artist, sometimes I have to modify how I create art, so that I can stay on schedule. It’s a worthy sacrifice because it pushes me to produce more work and become who I want to be.

I call this series “Crocus in Snow“. When the first flowers pop up through the ground- even through snow- our hearts leap with hope that spring is coming soon. Some winters are darker and longer than others. A simple flower means so much.