Painting

Here is the latest happenings with the painting for above my bed:

It actually looks way better in this picture than it does in real life. I'm sure that you're sitting there thinking "I could never do that" but in actuality, it's not nearly as difficult as you think. The first step is to come up with a concept of what you want to do. This can either be a vague idea of what you want to do, a picture of something you want to paint, or just an idea in your head. My concept was "a giant red flower". I'm not sure what it is but I love painting flowers, and I love painting with the color red. Red easily mixes with other colors to bring out the highlights and shadows making it my favorite color to work with.

After I came up with my concept, I got out some red paint and my giant paint brush and sketched out the center circle of the flower along with the different petals. I filled in the petals with just plain red and called it a night. A few days later, I came back to the painting and decided to tackle one petal at a time. I like to do each petal at a time so that each one looks different, just like how a real flower would look. I mixed the red with some combination of orange, light green, blue and dark green. I just swipe the paint brush in the red, and then just dab the brush in one or more of the accent colors, and then just fill in the petal. Along the edges I try to make it darker so that you can tell the distinction between the petals better, and because a flower would usually be more shadowed there.

If I mess up by making the filling bigger than what I had outlined, then I just go with it. I try not to think too much about what its "supposed" to look like (ie where an actual shadow would go, where a highlight would go), and just kind of let it happen on the canvas. Then, I step back and see if something looks off and then fix it. This is where I left off, and will fill you in on the steps as I progress. Hope you enjoyed the painting tutorial.