Artist Spotlite – Jonathan Kwegyir Aggrey

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Name: Jonathan Kwegyir Aggrey

Title: The Heart of Katapor Village

Medium: Watercolor on Paper

Size: 19” x 27”

Location: Accra, Ghana.

Background:

The Heart of Katapor Village

“Katapor is a small traditional town in the central part of Pokuase in the Greater Accra Region where I live. The main occupation in the town is farming and stone cracking by hand. The opened space in the painting is the Heart of Katapor Village where traditional drums are beaten to summon the people to hear an announcement about a festival or any important village matters.

I captured this scene late one morning using a limited palette in a combination of earth colors and greens. I left the areas lit by the sun as white paper and emphasized on the shadows to show the time of the day. The figures and birds in the foreground shows the typical movement of the people and the type of domestic animals commonly found in the village. I infused several colors during the painting process to capture the mood and atmosphere.

I added graceful frontal branches with some leaves on the top left to help balanced with the foliages on the right side of the composition. The brushstrokes are very useful for balancing a painting or to fill up space that looks bare.”

Tags: original painting, original watercolor, plein air, Watercolor Painting

Comments

4 Comments on "Artist Spotlite – Jonathan Kwegyir Aggrey"

Ingrid Albrecht on Thu, 20th Aug 2009 6:02 pm

Hi Jonathan,

You did a beautiful job of depicting the Katapor town in watercolor. I can “hear” those chickens and smell the fires typical to those small towns!

I would like to make a few comments.

When we as artists begin to plan our paintings, we need to decide WHERE we want the viewer to spend a little more time in our painting. This means that we need to have that one area in our work emphasized a bit more by using a possibility of: brighter colors, variety in edges, contrasting values, interesting contrasting shapes, and movement within the painting leading us to this area of interest that YOU, the artist, has decided to give us. Maybe giving a bit more color to the area emphasizing the people, would add more interest to your painting. I would also consider raising or lowering the horizon line to give your painting more drama.

Thank you so much for sharing with us! Keep painting, keep practicing, as you are your own BEST TEACHER!

Happy painting!

Ingrid

Soroya on Thu, 20th Aug 2009 8:30 pm

Your painting gives me a very peaceful feeling. The only thing I can suggest is a little more color to the people as they are hardly noticeable. But then again maybe that is the effect you wanted to depict. All in all I really enjoyed the view.
Thanks
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