Posted on by MarionBE

Seaweed Painting Project Gallery

As was my hope, a closer consideration of seaweed for April’s painting project has led to some joyful discoveries and delightful paintings.

By Bee: “Watercolour and water soluble pen. I enjoyed this more than I expected.”

From Marion: The water-soluble ink works so well for this subject, giving that sense of dampness and water.
By Bee: “Acrylic on a piece of cardboard, just the thing to do on a cold day.”

From Marion: Such a contrast to your first with its more opaque colours. I love that it’s on that tipping point between realism and abstract, that with the word “seaweed” in mind, I instantly read it as such, but someone looking at it without this keyword might see it as grasses, twigs.
By Bee: “I have had a third go at the seaweed , this time combining our art club challenge which is a painting using only 3 colours and only mixing on the paper, I used cobalt blue , vermillion and golden yellow.”

From Marion: Only three colours? Shows how much potential there is with a limited palette, and how harmonious colour can be across a composition with this. I am enjoying the transparency and layering, the sense of one piece of seaweed lying on another and over rocks, of seeing it with softened edges as though viewed through shallow water.
By Eddie: “I decided to try taking some of the seaweed forms and try to make an abstract with this result. It’s approximately 9×13” in soft pastels on black velour paper. I don’t love it but, after working on it for a while, don’t absolutely hate it either.”

From Marion: I’m enjoying the limited, gentle range of colours that’s calm and harmonious, whilst having an energy and vibrance from the wide tonal from extreme dark to white. I find my eye tracing the strong lines, and adding faces to the three “wigs” of long hair at the bottom as imagination overtakes what I’m actually seeing.
By Sarah: “I am enjoying working on Vellum, calf skin, with watercolour for this project. I am only partway through, it is my first time and it is a slow process.”

From Marion: I’ve seen this “in real life” and it’s even more beautiful than in the photo. The colour of the piece of vellum chosen adds a beautiful “background”, and the layers of watercolour you’ve built up are rich and luminous.

Also this month, paintings inspired by the shoreline and pebbles projects:

By Helen: A mixed media “Dark Beach”
By Erika: This was an interesting exercise: rather than painting the items ON to a canvas, I extracted them by using a not very successful painting of earlier days. It reminded me of focusing on “negative spaces” which I haven’t done very often. I can almost watch my mind trying real hard to switch to that mode of looking at things differently, from the “other” side, from inside-out.

From Marion: You’ve made my fingers itch to try this approach, which I’d forgotten about.

I haven’t yet managed to get my seaweed on wood painting working to my satisfaction, and it hasn’t moved on much from where it is in this video. Of my attempts at this month’s painting project, this is the one I like best.

Acrylic ink on A3 watercolour paper

My thanks to everyone who’s shared their project paintings, here and on the Community section of my Patreon page. It’s so intriguing and inspiring to see what comes from the same starting point. I look forward to seeing what’ll be done with the Stormy Bay project.

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