Jun 16, 20232 min read

Painting 'The Jetty'

abstract mixed media painting in blue and orange — 'The Jetty'

I’ve been meaning to try beginning with a black background to see what difference that makes to the final piece and I had a 30 x 30 cm board to experiment with, just lying around so I thought I’d give it a go whilst I still had the blues and ranges on my palette.

The black underneath created unexpected little pockets of deep 'space' which were intriguing. I’m not sure I could have achieved these without the black under painting.

It got me thinking more about the intrinsic harmony created by starting on a single colour as a base layer.

Using pure white over the grey added something too which is food for thought.

I went back to using white gesso as my white, it’s less opaque than other whites, I also love the more matte finish, which works well when I get the pencils out. I find the charcoal pencils especially don’t work so well over a glossy finish, but they snag and smudge quite nicely over the gesso. I’m also wondering if I’m finding my niche with the posca and paint pens a bit more….when they’re painted over they really seem to add something to the visual texture. I might experiment with this idea a bit more….

It’s interesting to see and get the feel for using paint over different surfaces, I’ve got canvas board and gel printed papers all happening in this little painting. I found myself kind of zoning out of the colours a bit as I’d been using the blue and orange quite a bit recently and found that I was naturally focusing more on the marks and the surface texture and thinking less about colour…..There’s obviously something to be said for repetition!

There seems to be so much to get lost in, in this little painting with all the layers and layers more layers…..I’ve had a lovely time wandering through a world of orange and blue but I think I might be ready for a change of colour-scene…..