Silhouette

Prompt 3 of Alena Hennesy‘s The Painting Workbook is all about silhouettes. I have been dying to make a page using a silhouette and learning how to execute them. However, to add more excitement and challenge, the group’s facilitator opted to put a twist for every prompt. Prompt 3’s twist – to use a light color or doodle in our silhouette.

The prompt came out last Monday and I could not come up with something to make. How on earth could I do a silhouette with light color? Not to stress myself with this, I chose to do other projects with other groups. Thus when I finished my exercise for The 2015 Art Project, an idea came up at once.

I used the same heart template I used with Growing My Wings and traced around my canvas paper. I also traced my basic grey chipboard letters to act as my silhouette. Colored the entire canvas with different shades of oil pastel mixed with mineral oil with cotton swabs. Added a few doodles for each letter with white posca pen and I’m done.

I guess not having the book and doing the prompts with what is being shared in the group makes the journey all the more exciting.

Monochromatic

Prompt 2 for Paint Happy: 52 prompts this week is all about minimizing our color palette. Leslie shared in the group that Alena said “that monochromatic color theme involves one color or hue plus black and white to make different tints and shades. It can make a strong statement, set a mood, or match the palette of our room’s decor.”

For this project I chose 5 different shades of blue acrylic paint – mediterranean blue, bleu bahamas, robin egg blue, azure and pool blue on canvas paper. I experimented with mixing mediterranean blue + bleu bahamas, the color mix framing the whole painting and azure + robin egg blue only in one circle.

I started this piece last night and continued on at 6:30 this morning. Painting early in the morning was something I am not familiar with but it seems like a good time to do art. I was relaxed, happy and very well rested. The energy just flowed freely and I was done in a few hours.

I do not know where this challenges/prompts will lead me or what lessons I will learn from this journey but one thing I know, I am very willing to dance to the tune of discovering how my artistic self will flourish with this adventure.

Color Pairs

A group I joined at facebook, Paint Happy : 52 Prompts gave its first prompt last week. It is all about color pairs. The group is facilitated by Leslie Jackson Ackman and we are using Alena Hennessy‘s book The Painting Workbook.

We were encouraged to browse through Alena’s book before the prompts begun, unfortunately I do not have the book and the biggest bookstore I could find here went out of stock. The bookstore cannot commit as to when they will be having stocks again, publisher problems they told me. Nevertheless, I will not let that deter my commitment on learning how to paint.

I chose to use watercolor paper at 165gsm at 11inx15in. It took me two days to figure out what I will do with this challenge. I am very fond of bright colors and would want to reflect that in my painting. After pairing my craft acrylics I proceeded with painting. This is the first project that I used only acrylics and it was quiet difficult since I am used to using pens to put words and marks in my other projects.

This exercise taught me to think outside of my comfort zone. I have never imagined that I would have a love-hate relationship with acrylics. I have had experienced only love from the time I started using them but with this project, there were a lot of moments when I wanted to crumple my paper and not start at all. Most people say that you have to continue and see what happens next, I did just that and finally told myself that this piece is finished. Though I am not satisfied with its outcome, I have learned a lot and the journey is what is most important.