......or the fun of having art!
Come closer - that's right, I want to tell you a secret. I'll whisper so it's just between you and me.....do you know that it's OK just to have some fun while painting? I know it's difficult to take on board especially if you were brought up in more austere times or if you only have a limited amount of time when you can paint...you don't want to 'waste' one precious second do you? But wait you don't have to do a 'proper' painting every time you sit down - you are allowed to have fun just messing around with your paints. It won't do you any harm and you may be surprised what comes out.
Now I love painting but to be really inspired I need a challenge - this might be a particular scene or effect I want to try and capture - then I can get real enjoyment from trying even if the end result doesn't work. But you can't feel like that all the time. This Saturday for example when I had a couple of hours to spare, where better than to spend it in my studio. So I taped up a pack of sample papers from St Cuthbert's Mill and decided to have a bit of fun. The samples are 8" x 6" and there are ten in the pack of various weights, makes and tints. One was definitely not heavy enough for what I had in mind, but that was good as the remaining nine fitted onto my board very nicely thank you.
Now I love painting but to be really inspired I need a challenge - this might be a particular scene or effect I want to try and capture - then I can get real enjoyment from trying even if the end result doesn't work. But you can't feel like that all the time. This Saturday for example when I had a couple of hours to spare, where better than to spend it in my studio. So I taped up a pack of sample papers from St Cuthbert's Mill and decided to have a bit of fun. The samples are 8" x 6" and there are ten in the pack of various weights, makes and tints. One was definitely not heavy enough for what I had in mind, but that was good as the remaining nine fitted onto my board very nicely thank you.
Here it is all set up and ready to go. I have prepared my five colours for the exercise - ultramarine blue, winsor red, winsor yellow, antwerp blue and brown madder. We'd been for a walk that morning and I noticed that the leaves were starting to turn autumnal so this would be my theme. I'm left handed so worked from the right hand column from top to bottom before moving onto the next column and so on. I sprayed a lot of water onto all the paper before dropping in the paints in sequence. So yellow first - lots of it because this would be the base to make my brown and oranges and also my greens. Red next, then ultramarine, followed by antwerp blue and finally a combination of ultramarine and brown madder. I left them to mix and do their their own thing.........
This is what I was left with. A bit of a mess you may think and I'll have to agree with you. But if you look really closely there are some interesting things going on - a lot of potential here. So once again I started in the top right hand corner and worked my way through each column letting the washes guide my painting by looking for shapes and effects I could use....a branch here, a tree there....is that a reflection over there...that kind of thing.
So this was the result of my two hours fun. What was the point you may ask? Well the point is that there was no point but it did reaffirm my belief that Saunders Waterford 140lb CP is the paper for me. Here they are then individually. Hope you enjoy them - I did ...it was fun!
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