01 March 2011

Get Your Paint On - Week 3

The assignment for week 3 was all about colour – we learnt about mixing colours and never to use paint straight out of the tube! This was a revelation to me because I realised just how limited my colour palette had been up until now. For the actual assignment we had to choose 4 items in colours we like, and mix paint to match the colours. The subject was totally up to us.

I knew straight away what I wanted to paint – I had bought some very large canvases (1m tall by 30cm wide) for half price the other week and have been eyeing them with trepidation ever since, so I knew I had to break the fear and just start painting one of them! I knew the main focus of the painting would be my girl figure that I use on a lot of drawings, and I brainstormed to work out what else I could add around her. 

I ended up using a paint chart to find colours I liked, as I love looking through them at all the beautiful muted shades. I made a small test version of my painting and mixed up approximate colours for it. Once I’d planned it out I set to work on the scary white canvas.
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I had consistency and coverage issues with painting the plain background, but after a couple of layers it looked OK. The girl and items took longer than I expected (but things always do!), and the thing I found most difficult about painting large was the awkward shape of the canvas – it was hard to work on laying flat on the table but it didn’t really fit on my small easel. Trust me to always choose the awkward way of doing things. I’m always drawn to the odd shaped canvases or paper, rather than a more normal shape – for some reason, I find it harder to plan paintings on conventional shapes. 

I really found out what it meant to follow the U-curve during a painting with this one. I hated it and wanted to give up half way through painting the girl figure. I thought it looked terrible and couldn’t work out how to position the canvas or anything, but I remembered what we’d been told and managed to work through it, so that eventually it started to come together and by the end I was really pleased with it. I will definitely work large again and it isn’t as scary as I thought. Having a plan and a small scale sketch to work from helped a lot.



I will be keeping 1 painting from each week of this course to show how much I’ve achieved, but I would love to produce a similar painting to sell in my shop – perhaps with a better background. I like the plain colour but think it is perhaps a little too plain. Backgrounds are definitely something to work on, and I’m already starting to look for inspiration and keep a scrapbook full of pictures, photos and ideas.

2 comments:

i.ikeda said...

I like the way it came out, but I know what you mean about the u-curve. Week 3 for me was the hardest so far.... And hey, I've started an inspiration scrapbook too! I love looking through it already, it makes me want to get out the paint and create something.

Morph Waffle said...

I really like it! I also like how you carried the image around to the side of the canvas, I don't think enough people do that, nice!

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