back to blogSo I've mentioned before how my surroundings influence my palette but when I started these paintings I was more fixated with painting a different size and shape. Instead of chopping a sheet of Arches paper into four small pieces to work on I thought I'd go for a really long thin, letterbox shape instead. Not sure why I hadn't thought of this before but for some reason that was definitely the shape I wanted to work with this time!
I started as usual with a really bright base colour which I then worked into with some marks using pigment sticks.
I started building up colours and then smothering them with a translucent orange to start to develop some depth. Here you can see that I have blended my colours on the surface rather than the palette. I use a squeegee to do that or even a palette knife.
When I use a translucent colour over a painting I then try to pull some off and create texture by rolling over some tissue paper.
The results can be a little hit and miss but this is a really good example of where it has worked and has produced some really interesting textures.
I then start building up the colours again and this is where the blending really comes in both with a fan brush and palette knife.
You can see here how the fan brush has delicately blended in the colours.
I am always looking for bold splashes of colour to help make a painting pop. I can do this by either using bold colours as base layers, adding splashes of paint as a highlight, and also by adding powdered pigments. This time I opted for some metallic powders and rather than try and embed into the painting I decided to brush it in.
It did get a little messy but once I'd added some more oil colour it really did bling and worked really well with the subdued greys and ochres.
I am super happy with the results both in terms of the shape of the painting as well as the use of colour. Have experimented further with this letterbox style and the metallic powders and I am hoping to have a mini-collection to exhibit together in the near future.
