Week 8 - Paint With One Colour

This week the challenge was to paint with one colour using different shades by only adding white or black. I decided to try watercolour on watercolour paper. The first colour I experimented with was ultramarine blue - added a lot of white and did a wash of this pale colour first leaving a lot of white areas, then straight colour, then added some darker shades - waited till it dried and added a bit more straight colour to add some depth. Got carried away with the wavy black lines.

I enjoyed doing this, so did a second one with cerulean blue in the same way. This time while painting the pale wash I thought it should look like a sky scene. Very happy with the softness of this painting and quite happy of what I achieved using only the one colour.

I loved the challenge of using the one colour and painted a third piece using sap green. Again added a lot of white did a wash, floated in some straight sap green - added black and fl0ated in some shadows. This one felt like a pond so that is what I tried to create with the different shades. Once dried painted in some reeds and branches using just the white and black. This is my favourite painting and I can see it expanded out into a larger piece, adding a few more colours and maybe a water bird of some sort.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing around with the washy effect of the watercolours all running together and quite amazed of what I created with a limited colour. I like the fact with watercolour you can lift the colour out and create white areas.

Week 7 - Painting to the Music

As Li-Sa and I both enjoyed this emotion music challenge, we decided to repeat it this month but this time using a different medium and different music. I have been a bit slack due to having a overseas visitor but did finish just a little bit later than normal. I decided to use water colours and listen to mediation music by Sacred Earth - Pamanyungun. I was going to use blue/green colours but once I started putting washes of colour on felt like I had to use more earth colours of brown and green, then the red happened and a tree with blue leaves appeared! Maybe it was the name of the group Sacred Earth that made me think of these colours. I only used cartridge paper - much prefer to use watercolour paper and will try and get some larger sheets for next time I want to use the washy effect of watercolours. I do enjoy using the watercolours as I love the flow of colours into each other.

Mountainscape From Week 2 - Finish

This is my second painting from Week 2 challenge - creating a mountainscape using tissue paper. I put it up on a wall and after looking at it a bit decided to make the raised tissue folds stand out more using hard pastel crayons. I also lighten and darked areas with my pastels and decided I quite liked this painting and the technique of using tissue paper. Will try and experiment with on a different piece later on.

Week 6 - Use Aluminum Foil in a Painting

This technique calls for aluminum foil to be glued to your paper with gel medium and salt to be sprinkled on while the gel was still wet. I started with three triangles - different sizes going up the page and put a wash of blue and red acrylic paint to create different shades, then added a mix of yellow/orange/burnt sienna to create some rust and dark tones. The photo doesn't really show any of the foil still coming through - in reality you can still see glints of the foil. Not totally happy with this piece as I don't feel like it looks "rusty" enough - would like to play around this this technique a bit more and try and rough up the foil a bit.

Week 5 - Paint What You Hear

This week was an emotion painting. We had to close our eyes and listen to the noises around us and paint what we could hear. I did this on a cold wet day sitting outside with all my painting equipment around me. I didn't really like doing this painting - couldn't really get into it. All I could hear were cars, lots of car noises - fast, slow, loud and lots of different birds, flying past, chirping, fighting on the roof! With my eyes shut I noticed it was a light black with speckles infront of my eyes and if I squeezed my eyes very tightly the speckles became green/yellow blobs. So..... this is what I painted - a black background with speckles, with lines of car noises - all different sounds in the distance and ever now and then a car close by in a different direction. The bird sounds became arrows, my dogs claws on the concrete sounded like yellow dashes and the rain on the roof white dashes/dots/lines. As I said before - couldn't get into this piece and didn't enjoy painting it and don't like it at all!