Painting a Memory

A painting requires a little mystery, 

some vagueness, some fantasy. 

When you always make your meaning perfectly 

plain you end up boring people. (Edgar Degas) 

Or you could end up boring yourself.

I recently had the urge to paint "some fantasy" as a way to remember a wonderful trip we had with friends to Isla Mujeres in Mexico.

the colors of the island were my favs, bright and eye popping

And the most unusual thing we kept seeing were the wild iguanas.... they were always sunning themselves and looked liked a cross between an alligator and a dragon.

we photographed this fellow on our way to the grocery

The iguanas just screamed to be painted.  They seemed to represent a bit of our vacation and a lot of fantasy.  Choosing a large, 48" high and 24" wide, gallery-wrapped canvas, I treated myself to working on it little by little dragging out the fun and letting the creative muse have her way.

My photo was pretty poor and with such a large canvas I felt better drawing it out on paper to judge proportions.  I also noted there was a lot of "undecorated" space that might need some help. 

Can you guess what inspired the colors?  This guy could only live on a Mexican island.

I found it difficult to imagine how that critter crawled up the concrete wall so I was concerned about getting his feet and claws positioned properly.  Then I gave up...this was for fantasy not a scientific illustration.

The patterns I invented on portions of the tail remind me of the wonderful Mexican tiles we had all over our apartment where we stayed.

I couldn't decide if he was a friendly soul or not but I stopped short of giving him a grin.

Iguana Be Me

48 x 24, gallery wrapped canvas, acrylic

And now we rest.  Until....

I couldn't resist!  he needed more of a scene so I added these pods...makes the wall look a bit more interesting.
Since I have an idea where this fellow is going to hang, let's mark him SOLD!

COLOR FILLED FANTASY,

Cindy