Getting Out Of My Comfort Zone
After taking a long break from painting, I have finally returned back to the studio to get back into it. My break was not entirely on purpose, more so caused by leaving my own health by the wayside and then facing the consequences. Now that I am back on my feet and in a better state of mind I am so happy to be working on making some new pieces.
I decided that I would enter the studio and create pieces that make me slightly uncomfortable. I am a perfectionist and I don't like failure; so the thought of trying something new (and ending up not being very good at it) has always scared me. The pieces I am planning on creating in the near future involve erratic brush strokes, strange colour schemes and subject matter I have not tackled before.
Christmas is coming up, so I thought my first few pieces back in the studio would be made specifically for the occasion. I thought jam jars would make the perfect little vases for little canvases, so I went with it and drew up a few very rough sketches,
Because having a plan to work by is awesome!
I've always wanted to add more depth to my backgrounds but have been afraid to, mainly because I wasn't really sure to go at it. As such, I've generally stuck to block colours - it's what I know and what I'm comfortable with, I have only now started to remember the words uttered by my mum - "nothing's right but everything's right".
Pink is the best colour ever, so I started with this background. I grabbed as many colours I thought would work together (and some that I thought didn't) and hoped for the best, but I still wasn't happy. It was missing something, but I wasn't really sure what
It needed dots! I have no clue on earth why it needed them (I don't even know if it did!) I just liked the idea, and that's half the fun of painting. As seen above, the plan for this piece is yellow/orange roses. It'll be interesting to see if I end up sticking to it. Once I finished this background it was on to the blue one.
Australia hosts some absolutely beautiful flora and fauna, and I have decided that I need to incorporate that more in my paintings. This canvas is going to have pincushion protea flowers, and potentially wattle. Unfortunately I ran out of time to photograph the other two canvases on their own, as I had to rush off to work, but I think they're going to shape up nicely!
Although this style of painting is unfamiliar to me, I loved painting them. It was exciting to try something new and gave me a bit of a thrill to go a wild with colour instead of playing it safe. I'm very excited to get the next layers on and start on the other pieces I'm designing.