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Thursday 2 May 2013

Getting Back into the Creative Mindset

Since returning to Canada, I've been having a hard time getting back into the creativity groove. I have a lot of things I need to accomplish but there is something blocking me from actually getting to it. Today I was determined to start something, anything, to see if I could break out of my "painter's block". Last week I went through some of my photographs and chose a couple that spoke to me. I decided I would paint water lilies. I wanted to use a pouring method so I chose to use fluid acrylic paint. I can paint with them like watercolour but because they are acrylic, when they dry they are permanent. So the next layer will lay on top instead of mixing with the lower layer as with watercolour. This painting is being done on watercolour paper and I wanted it to have fresh colours so I am not following my photograph for that aspect.


As always, I start with a pencil sketch on watercolour paper. The darker lines you see on the paper is masking fluid that I put on to save some white on the page. I will try to paint around the water lily.


I began with wetting my page in the areas where the lily pads are situated and poured some yellow paint in those areas letting it move through on its own. I didn't use a brush to spread it. While it was still wet I poured a blue over top so it would mingle and produce a green.


After the yellow and blue (green) dried. I wet the areas that were to be water and poured a turquoise paint there gently guiding the paint into corners and around lily pads with a small brush.

 
Now I started using a brush and began darkening the lily pads with various greens from yellow green to a blue green.

 

I then began to define things by darkening the water as well as the lily pads and placed some shadow areas in. As you can see I have managed to keep the lily white. My plan is to paint the lily in soft pinks and purples. At this stage I also removed the masking fluid so now those areas appear white. As I was working on this painting, I decided I would use watercolour pencils on it just to do something different for a change and see how it looks.

Well, I've gotten started and I think the momentum will grow and I be back in the creativity swing again. Stay tuned to see how this one turns out.

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