Painting an idea

giving pattern a new meaning

Aug 15, 2023

In my previous blog I explored creating some patterns in my sketchbooks and now I’m going to use what I discovered from that in a painting.

Starting with a rough underpainting of one of the patterns…

…I go down the mixed media rabbit hole because it’s so much fun…

“Mixed media is a term used to describe artworks composed from a combination of different media or materials.” In my mixed media paintings I use coloured pencils, led pencils, paint pens, textas and paint. Sometimes I use ink and collage as well.

I deviate from my original plan - I was going to go with an entirely pink and yellow theme, but start to add colours from the opposite side of the colour wheel as well. I think it’s really important to let the painting take the lead at some stage through the painting process, by doing that it informs me what to do next rather than I try to make it into the thing of my original plan - here I let intuition guide me - I go with a feeling not a formulae, and it can quickly take me into the ugly middle stage of the painting process. (note, anyone who’s painted knows that ugly middle stage of painting).

…another project I’ve been working on is autumn landscapes…

this was the first project for term three at Splashout Studios which was part of the general painting curriculum - see here

I did a couple of studies and a larger work.

My first study I played around with colours - Indian yellow, Yellow Ochre, burnt sienna, orange, french ultramarine blue, burnt umber, cobalt turquoise, pyrrole red, quinacridone magenta, Australian sky blue, white - creating a warm pallet which felt like autumn.

The other paintings are trees - here I was trying to create the illusion of leaves without actually painting leaves, and the illusion of perspective by following the atmospheric perspective rule with my colour choices.