To Crop or Not To Crop

Cropping is one way to transform an image for emphasis.

When I first began to create watercolor collage paintings, I chose the areas of previous watercolor paintings that I liked. In other words, I cropped a portion of the painting. Having done several paintings of the same subject, I had several paintings and areas to choose from. Then, I recreated a painting using my favorite croppings. Thus, the birth of watercolor collage painting!

Recently, I have cropped the encaustic paintings I created while at a painting & yoga workshop in the Berkshires into miniatures, and entered them in the Miniature Art Show in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Now, I am toying with how to crop another pastel painting done in the Berkshires. I am not happy with painting as a whole, but I do like aspects of the pastel painting which might make smaller individual paintings.
Let me explain.......

Here is the original pastel painting:



The cropping I like with the three trees as the subject.



Then, I am intrigued by the cropping of the light on the hillside....



Are they "keepers"? What are your feelings?

Miniatures

The Cannon Beach Gallery in Oregon, a program of the non-profit Cannon Beach Arts Association, is calling for original art submissions for its annual All Juried Miniatures Show this November.

Two of my fellow artists, Judi Colwell and Ellen Miffit, and I have started a tradition to enter this show. It began as a challenge last year because none of us have done miniature paintings before. For one thing, Miniatures are easy to mail, and, two, what fun it would be to take a field trip together to visit Cannon Beach to pick up our art if they were accepted. Need I say, we had a FABULOUS adventure together to Cannon Beach, and my painting sold!

As I looked at my most recent art from a trip to the East Coast, I realized that I liked certain areas of my paintings better than others. What if I cut up the painting into miniature paintings?

Here are two of my entries for the Miniature Show in Cannon Beach taken from an encaustic painting I did at a painting & yoga workshop in the Berkshires:


New England Fall Colors #1


New England Fall Colors #2