Some time ago, Jessica and I bought a small decorative table painted with flowers. We placed it between two chairs outside on the deck behind our house.
A week after we put it outside, the weather had stripped the paint right off. Before we knew it, we had a white table, so Jessica asked me to repaint it.
Jessica likes dragonflies, so she asked me to paint one instead of trying to recreate the original painting. I asked her if she had anything specific in mind; she said I had free reign, the only requirement was “contains a dragonfly.”
I started with the background. I meant to paint a solid blue for the sky, but the paint kind of smeared a bit on the table. When it dried, I decided that I liked it. It looked a little like wispy clouds.
I had started the foreground with the idea of it looking like grass. There is some green in there, but I just started mixing colors and ended up with this sort of dream-like mix of reds and oranges. Sure, why not?
Now, it was time to paint the dragonfly itself. I still hadn’t made a decision, but my original thought was to paint a silhouette, not unlike this:
Somehow, I didn’t think that was… creative enough. Besides, I wanted to show the translucence of the wings. I decided to use the shape of the table itself, and painted a piece of long grass for the dragonfly to rest on.
As for the dragonfly, I wanted to make it stand out from the grass behind it. There are a limited number of colors which I can tell apart, so I chose blue for the body. I outlined the whole thing in black, and added white highlights to increase vibrancy. I am rather pleased with how the whole thing turned out.
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