Blog #19 How’d You Do That?

‘Bevy Of Beauties’ Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas 18″x24″

I thought you’d might be interested in my creative process. Why I paint what I paint and how I achieve the finished result. When you take a look at my watercolour and acrylic painting galleries on this website you may notice how much of my work looks so very different from each other. How I don’t have a set style or approach. That I keep reinventing my art with new techniques, colours and themes.

I like to keep moving, meaning I get excited by new things. I get such enjoyment by painting in uncharted territory. The outcome is anyone’s guess. Not all paintings work out and that’s okay. Trying new ways of painting creates an environment for failure that’s true, but it also exposes you to happy accidents and surprises. Often I feel that I spend all my time correcting my mistakes throughout the painting process. Oops not that colour, nope that doesn’t look good there, yikes that got messy…and so on. My inner voice often says to me ‘what the heck are you doing?’ But generally I find myself onto something. The thrill is when my painting process goes well. When my brushes answer to me as I add the pigment. When the vision in my head starts to resemble what’s appearing on my canvas. What a rush!

To balance the abundance of flowers I decided to make the vase less busy by changing it to one colour in the final painting.

The painting you see here, ‘Bevy of Beauties’ came from an imagined idea I had. Firstly I did a quick pencil sketch of what I was thinking of. I thought, ‘How fun, a bunch of flowers that could look like anything, I’ll keep the painting style fast and loose’. Hahaha, after more than a week of painting on it, I had to do more painting. Painting over certain areas, plus needing to add elements in others and then changing some of the colours it all became anything but fast and loose. But sometimes I think we give up too soon on a painting when we feel it failing our expectations. So I was really glad I kept working on this one. I love the end result. The composition works, the colours are vibrant and some looseness still shines through. I learned a lot while I was painting it. It demanded more from me and I am a better artist for it.

To see this finished acrylic painting ‘Bevy Of Beauties’ and more paintings please go to my original art watercolour and acrylic galleries on this website.