Earth with Moon

Earth with Moon – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Earth with Moon is a new painting for my abstract series in space. Over the past few years I had painted most of the planets in our solar system. This week, the idea came to me that I should add the earth to complete the series. I decided to include the moon and made the earth large with the moon shining up above. The sunlight pours in from the left contrasting with the darkness of the space. It’s a bit different from the other paintings, less abstract.

This painting was challenging, there are several layers of paint, I started with light colored curving strokes and spirals adding the earth and moon expanding circles of light but it looked chaotic. It only came together once I made the earth and moon more solid and darkened the space between. I found it a bit more challenging to play with making it as abstract as I see the moon in the darkness of night and know that earth spins with the blue oceans, green and sand colored land masses with white clouds swirling above. It works somewhat but I might play with doing another one down the road.

Alice’s Horse

Alice’s Horse ~ acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Alice’s Horse is a new abstract painting that I’ve done for my sister. She wanted one of my abstract paintings but one with muted colors that differ from my usual jewel colored space abstracts; one that would fit in with her open living space of their relatively new home. The painting is on 22″ by 33″ watercolor paper, I had not painted in this large scale for several years. In some ways it’s more freeing to paint with large strokes; I enjoyed it and I plan to do more.

My older sister took horse back riding lessons and was a natural, My dad got a beautiful horse named Scarlet for her and our family that he kept at a friend’s countryside place in Seal, Alabama. It seemed like every weekend throughout the year we were out there playing in the countryside. Alice spent many days riding Scarlet. I thought it would be meaningful for her to include a horse in the abstract landscape. Doing this painting brought back many happy memories of our times there. It got me thinking of a few more ideas of new paintings in the style to complete a series.

Infinity

Infinity – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Infinity is my new abstract painting. I chose to paint the infinity loop as I had been reading of how the infinity sign is a loop going back and forth continuously while the center point is still, which I thought was interesting.

In the painting I kept with the theme of swirls of jewel toned colors and spheres of various colors and sizes. I painted the infinity sign looping in the center with the still point centered which I played with a spiral coming out.

I’m shifting gears this week to paint a bear and then will paint another abstract with a different color palate. I think it will be helpful to change things up a bit.

Inner Space

Inner Space ~ by Heni Sandoval

I’ve just competed a new abstract painting titled, Inner Space. I liked the complexity of the last abstract painting, Outer Space, with the many colored spheres of various sizes and wanted to continue with that idea.

I follow the Design in Nature Facebook group and love looking at the various images posted on their page. Every so often an incredible image of a magnified leaf or flower will show up on my feed. Nature provides us with beautiful organic designs. Some of these images look a bit like space with the tiny particles and wave like lines.

I decided to imagine that I was painting a microscopic organic structure so small that I could see particles and waves. I enjoyed making the waves look like tree branches dividing and as they moved through space getting smaller. Perhaps because on my winter walks it’s hard not to notice all the many tress here with the intricate branch patterns. I used a lot of paint and played with the various sized particles to give it a spacious feeling. It was fun to do.

We’re enjoying a mild winter here, after surviving the record breaking frigid winter holiday season. The daffodils are out and the cherry blossoms are just starting. Spring will be here soon.

Galaxy

Galaxy – acrylic painting by Heni Sanoval

Galaxy is a new abstract painting for my space theme. A few weeks ago, I saw a photo that showed brightly lit stars upon stars filling the space with a caption that said something like “how space actually is” That gave me the idea to paint an image of lots of stars on the page.

I laid down colorful spirals and and curving lines and then put in spheres in small to larger sizes as if they are expanding out into space. It was fun to paint getting to play with lots of color. My next painting is going to be more subdued. I’ll be making a cat painting for my chiropractor who helped with my neck injury. His healing energy helped me get through the experience and I’m thanking him with a painting of their family cat.

I put up holiday decorations early this year because we had a holiday artist open house here in early December. It was fun, I sold prints from my etsy days and and also picked up some lovely unique gifts. I like getting all that done early as now we can relax and do a bit of entertaining. On Monday our daughter will be flying home for the holidays; we can hardly wait to see her! I hope everyone is enjoying this festive season.

Uranus

Uranus – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Uranus is my most recent painting and the final one in my abstract planet series. In these paintings, I like to imagine that the planets are connected with the surrounding waves of colorful energy and smaller spheres all moving through space together. I’m so enjoying getting back to painting and this one was a fun to do.

Uranus is the seventh planet out from our sun and takes 84 years to travel around the sun. It is a blue ice gas giant and is the coldest planet in the solar system. A full day on Uranus is 17 hours and it spins west to east unlike most of the other planets. Another unique fact is the Uranus’s axis is 99 degrees which means that it rotates on its side, so it spins like a ball rolling down a hill. I tried to show this as I painted Uranus with the light from the sun on the right side and the ring almost perpendicular on the page.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 and is named after the Greek god Uranus who was the god of the sky. In astrology Uranus rules the sign of Aquarius and it symbolizes the rebel, the outsider and the genius of the heavens. Since it was discovered at the time of the French and American Revelations, this planet has been correlated with independence, and breaking old structures.

Black Hole

Black Hole – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Black Hole is the newest painting for my abstract outer space series. It’s darker than a lot of my paintings. With the challenging world events going I was in the mood to bring in more darkness contrasting with the light. I experimented with various colors, playing with dark planets contrasting with the light and the lighter planets against the dark space. I like the way the black hole looks a like an eye.

It’s horrific and shocking viewing what is happening in the Ukraine, the brutality of Putin’s war all over social media for everyone to see. It seems that the whole world may be coming together to say no more, I hope anyway. I’m beginning a new painting to distract myself and continue to hope for a peaceful resolution.

Cosmic Egg

Cosmic Egg by Heni Sandoval

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with an artist friend of mine who told me she works on several paintings at a time. I liked that idea; my studio is not ideal for that because it’s a small room off the main bedroom. I did, however start working on two paintings at a time; one larger abstract with more overlaid colors and the smaller looser tiger painting from last week. This week I completed the abstract which I’ve titled, Cosmic Egg.

I chose the cosmic egg because it helps me to have concrete theme as I paint abstracts. On Instagram I had had recently seen a post on geometric patterns using the vesica piscis symbol of the interlocking circles that I had used for the water element painting. The inside shape has also been said to be a cosmic egg, a common motif in mythologies. With this idea in mind, I started the painting with two interlocking large curves and kept layering colors and eventually forming the egg shape in the center.

The Cosmic Egg is a major creation symbol used in myths throughout the world. It is a metaphor of potentiality and held within chaos, prior to becoming the creative cosmos.

Curves

Curves -acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Curves is my most recent abstract. I’m enjoying doing these paintings, this time my goal was to use muted colors with darker tones. As you can see, I did not succeed with that goal, as I tend to always end up with jewel colors and while there are some dark tones, this painting is quite bright. What I do like about it is that the many layers of paint begin to give the painting depth and I actually love the rich colors.

I am going to force myself to change my color palette in the next few paintings to see how that goes. I also want to start painting in a larger format and am going to get some larger watercolor sheets in the next few weeks. We’re in for an overcast weekend after a few days of off and on rainy weather here as the remnants of another hurricane come through. I plan to start the new painting tomorrow.

Blue Spiral

Blue Spiral – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

I took some time off from painting to work on my artist website that I had made back in 2017. I had not done much with it since being in a two art shows in 2018. With my sister’s devotional, Awaken to Rest being published any day now, my website may get some more traffic. With this in mind, I uploaded several paintings from the last few years to the collection pages and made a new artist statement and projects page. I’m still tweaking it, but it’s in fairly good shape.

So, now I am back to painting. Blue Spiral is another abstract, I had the idea to paint spirals on all sides of the page. I began with the blue spiral centered horizontally on the page and then painted another spiral perpendicular and then two more coming across from the corners, each one a different color. From there, I began playing with more loops and circles and blending colors until it felt right. All the remained to be seen was the Blue Spiral.

It’s hard to believe that September is just a few days away, hope everyone is enjoy the last days of summer.