Backgrounds

I’ve been working on backgrounds and the relationship between the subject and the background. Some of my pictures have started out with just a plain shade of white/cream, kind of a scientific approach, like a technical diagram, a forensic study of a particular specimen. The earlier shells had backgrounds of sand or water, more like the subject in its natural surroundings. Lately I’ve been going more for a “portrait” approach, the subject is posed like a human and the background is part of the picture but not dominant or competing for attention. Sometimes it’s hard to find just the right shade or combination of shadows that sets up the portrait of the shell in just the right way. Sometimes I try several different approaches. Sometimes the background is smoothed out, sometimes the brush marks show. I’m not a smooth person, I lean towards the painterly. I like it when the shell has a “monumental” look, like more than a shell, like “2001 Space Odyssey”, floating there in time. I have not yet tried black or deep siennas, but they are on my list. It seems like the shells are a brightly lit seaside thing not a dark thing, so that is another concept to think through and decide.

 These three have realistic backgrounds.

 These three I recently reworked the backgrounds in various shades of beige, blue, sand, greys. I'm still making up my mind about some.

 The razor clam has some wet sand beneath it, but it's not textured like sand. I originally wanted it to just float in space like a specimen or a shell on a page in a notebook, but it didn't quite make it.






This one I just repainted the background a lighter shade of grey, but now the whole painting is too grey. I need to shift the color scheme for the background some, but haven't decided what to do. I'm thinking of adding a shadow to the right, like there would be in a portrait.