This week’s topic over at Illustration Friday is ‘love’. I haven’t participated in one of these prompts in a really long time – I think the last one was back in January 2011 (and ironically, that post is all about how my new year’s resolution was to participate in prompts more often. Whoops.) I decided to participate this week because the topic is one that really suits my painting style.
One of my favourite things to do is represent people as trees, showing the relationships between the people using colour, size, spacing and other elements.
In one of my most recent paintings, I used two trees to represent the love of a couple. I represented the theme of ‘love’ in a variety of ways. Firstly, the trees themselves are shaped like hearts. You will also notice many hearts in the swirls of the leaves if you look closely. I painted the trees very close together, overlapping. I also deliberately allowed the paint to run and mix at the point where the trees touched – I wanted to convey the way that in a close relationship, people become part of one another. I used the a mix of the red and blue in the colours of the sky to also show this connection.
You can purchase this original painting from my Etsy Store or my Facebook page. Prints and art products available at RedBubble and Society6.