The riot of gorgeous autumn colours on our Ontario trees are at their best right now and that got me wanting to mirror that in my next painting. It’s such fun to create a painting that is packed with colours and has energy at its core. With this in mind I layered the initial cool background colours on thickly using heavy body acrylics. Before they had a chance to dry I scraped into the painted surface intuitively with the pointy end of my paint brush handle. This created wonderful lines of texture that will show through the additional layers of paint in the finished painting.
Then I continued to paint a frenzy of fabulous hot colours on top letting some of the background greens/blues peak through here and there. Patterns began emerging and more lines were added then some deep reds and oranges were included. This is so great, I am loving the feeling of movement I see in this painting. It’s much like the swaying of the wind swept trees outside my studio window. I am using a sturdy 2 inch deep gallery wrapped canvas for this painting so the end result will be ready to hang with no need for framing.
Once I was content with what I had put down so far I felt it was time to create the trees’ shapes. I made up a puddle of really runny wet paint of mostly titanium white with a touch of naphthol light red. I wanted it to be a transparent wash of colour that would delineate the trees without covering up the background colours entirely. As I added each shape of white I quickly ragged off the excess paint with a bunched up paper towel. This helped to create even more lovely texture in that wet paint. I am delighted with the end result. This painting has all the vibrant colours of autumn’s trees with the white hinting at winter’s snow yet to come.
To see this finished acrylic painting ‘Autumn’s Dance’ close up and for more of my paintings please go to my original art watercolour and acrylic galleries on this website.