It’s Day 12 of Art Every Day Month and there are some great artists sharing their work! I am enjoying being a part of this for a second year. It’s inspiring indeed and gets me excited to create every day!

I am still very new to painting let alone adding any colour at all. Since my last post I’ve been working in small amounts every day on one piece. I borrowed from the library the book Daring Adventures in Paint. I had decided to try something totally unlike me and paint without knowing what I was going to do. Kind of let loose. This is a great book for that and although it took me forgetting all of my drawing habits of planning and visualizing, I knew in order to grow I had to try something new. Mati starts off with a blank canvas (the scariest for me!) and shows you steps to add colour for depth and gives advice on how to choose which colours to use.

For my own sake, as this is my first painting where I haven’t just painted without any idea of how to do it, I took pictures so I could see how I progressed. Warning – there are a lot of pictures! :0

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Mati talks about choosing a few analogous colours and adding them to the canvas on one brush without mixing them too much. I loved this idea because sometimes when I put the brush to the canvas I had one solid colour and other times two or three similar ones came sneaking out. I loved this exercise. It totally freed me up!

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I LOVE LOVE LOVE the moon and after sitting with this painting for a bit I felt that a moon wanted to come out of the top corner so I went with it and made  a moon.  I started to draw a girl in the lower left(ish) part of the piece (you can see it in pencil) and decided it wasn’t the right spot and wasn’t sure how to go about it so I erased it.

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I waited again until I saw something else that wanted to be added to the painting. The whole idea of waiting and not just starting and finishing a piece in one or two sittings is alien to me. I find that to feel productive I need to start and finish things. But, in doing so, I realize that I am not really giving myself time to grow and explore. That being said, I’d like to try some more automatic painting and am very inspired by Flora Bowley! Baby steps…

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Every moon needs it’s admirer and I added in a girl singing to the moon. 🙂 I grabbed one of my acrylic markers that I had yet to use (so fun!) and drew the music notes.

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I wasn’t sure how to place all of the notes and so my husband, the designer and awesome sketcher, suggested I use a piece of tracing paper first. What a super awesome idea as I was able to try something and then erase and try again until I felt it worked. I then traced the notes onto the other side of the paper by placing it up against the window, laid it on the canvas and traced the notes so that there were faint markings left on the canvas.

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Finishing touches with my moon insignia and some highlights.

I am happy with my first painting, as something I took the time to work through and not rush. It felt good to it slow and appreciate the process. I think I am going to stick with this kind of painting for a bit and see where it leads. I have a lot to learn!

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Comments of course, are always welcome, but so is constructive criticism. I’m new to this whole painting thing so any insight and/or tips are greatly appreciated!

Happy Creating! <3

 

16 Comments

  1. dawn suzette

    You already know I love this!
    Seeing your process is so inspiring. I love all of the photos and seeing the evolution. Amazing how you worked with what was created and used that to move forward. I had to scroll up and down a few times to see how things fit as you added.
    I am so happy to hear how you let go of the planning to let the process flow. Yay!
    Keep going! This is an amazing and truly magical start!
    xx

    1. moongirl

      I love that you love to see my work and are excited about me sharing. It means so so much to me to have such a dear friend who is genuinely interested in my passion. Thank you! <3

    1. moongirl

      Thank you for the encouraging words! It’s challenging to take what’s in my head and as you say, and make it physical but I’m workin’ on it and I love the way you describe it. Perfect.

  5. amy

    yay! This is lovely. fun to just put paint down, isn’t it? I would hazard a guess that finding a balance between planning and free-wheeling is a struggle in any creative pursuit. I hope you continue to enjoy figuring that balance out for yourself.

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