From watercolour to ink to acrylics to oil pastels to beet juice, there’s a lot of variation in the paintings done in response to June’s painting project. Enjoy!
From Marion: I get a sense from the result that you enjoyed painting this, it has a vibrancy and energy to it.
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From Marion: There’s such a tangible sense of texture in the photo, and in real life I imagine it’d be hard to resist running my hand over the surface.
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From Marion: Having had a cat sit on my lap at Talisker Bay beach, I have no trouble believing it! I’ve enjoyed looking at the layers of mark making, the ink energetically pulling my eye around whilst adding a sense of texture of the different elements (rock, water, seaweed) and the gentle colour enhancing it (love that you included the pop of pink on that one rock!).
From Marion: The tide’s come in!
Materials used: acrylic on canvas, Island moss, beet juice, kale greens and juice, money plant petals, dried balsam root leaves cut-outs from magazines and lots of acrylic paste and medium. The critic in me says: done too quickly (3 days), not well thought out, too much alike “Talisker Bay” paintings but overall interesting exploring new materials and checking out the colour “fast-ness” of natural juices.
From Marion: The time taken to make a painting is not a measure of the quality of a painting, it’s only a measure of time. Some paintings happen quickly, others don’t; the ones that take longer aren’t inherently better. I think it’s different to your Talisker Bay paintings and stands by itself, but also sits comfortably alongside them.
From Marion: I love the strong graphic nature of this, that’s taken it into abstract yet when my eye hits the boulder the shapes shift into seashore. And that’s definitely a crocodile!
From Marion: I like the strong colour, that you were bold with this, because this is how it was in real life. It’s got that sense of almost-too-intense and vibrant colour that seaweed so often has.
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From Marion: I feel this builds on what you did in your first painting. You’ve got the intensity of colour, but it’s more broken up and not so linear. The texture paste has helped to give depth but also variation in colour as it has helped break up brushmarks.
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From Marion: If it were mine, I’d keep working on it. Think of it as a colourfield abstract (think: Mark Rothko) of pattern and colour, rather than having a focal point. There wants to be variation, not every area with the same size or level of mark making but simultaneously having every area reward close looking.
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From Marion: This painting is far livelier and colourful, and feels as if you enjoyed it more. I wonder if it’s bigger than the previous, giving you more space to make the marks? I like that you haven’t tidied up the drips, and that they go multiple directions, giving a sense of movement and water.
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From Marion: I’d agree that this is the most successful of the three, taken to another level with the pen mark making on top of the layers of colour. The combination of hard edges and soft edges, more saturated colour against the more muted.
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Remember, it’s never too late to do a project, they’re not limited to only that month and can be done at any stage as fits your time. Your paintings will simply be included in the next photo gallery.
From Marion: I can’t help myself, I think the title for this has to be “Why did the sheep cross the road?” The touch of sunset colour (or maybe sunrise?) is echoes in the foreground colours, and adds to the tranquility of the scene.
— March 19 Painting Project
From Marion: To the left of where I took the reference photo the path goes down into a shadowy gully, so your painting feels to me as if you were facing in that direction rather than the gorse hillside. I would take the darks further, adding deep purples and blues, perhaps also lighten the gorse to emphasise the darks.
— May19 Painting Project
Several people have commented on the lack of a focal point in my choice of painting project photos, which has made me realise how much my compositional choices are biased towards pattern and colour. It’s made me question and ponder, learn something about my own painting, and it may well develop into a workshop exercise..
