#blurrylights

On Thursday I started adding layers to my paintings using lighter shades of the three colours I used already (red, orange and green). I continuously mixed these colours with white to make them lighter.

Here is after the first layer.

This is after the second layer which I really like as you can see the shadows of the colours as intended.

Here is the third layer of the lighter shades. With each lighter shade I used a smaller brush to avoid covering the previous layer completely. I used the very tip of the brush and dabbed it on lightly.

In this I used solid white. Eoin had advised me to not use solid white so I used it on one just to see why he recommended not to use it. After applying the white I understood why. It distracts from the background colours but I also thing I appied it on too heavily.

This is the finished collection. I added very little bits of white to the rest of the pages and I think they came out a lot better as it is less distracting and blends in well.

I really enjoyed this workshop as when I've painted previously I got very stressed the image I was referencing was very detailed and I was trying to get it as accurate as possible. But in this workshop I got to take a more abstract approach which was really fun for a change.

I'm happy with the outcome as there was a process before it where I learn new ways to paint and got to experiment and figure out what worked and what didn't.

On Tuesday afternoon I pinned 6 A4 pages of card onto the wall and mixed up paint to a near black shade with the intention of painting all 6 of the pages with that as the background colour as that is the colour of the image below.

This is a cropped and edited image of my own Christmas tree at home. I really liked this image as the lights stand out. I decided to take inspiration from this image in my paintings.

Once all the pages were dry I painted on dark shades of red, orange and green very lightly with a paint brush in a circular motion.

I really like the outcome so far as in my brain its almost like squinting and seeing the coloured lights or almost the nostoagia of warm Christmas lights. I look forward to building this up with more layers on Thursday.

On Tuesday morning I was stuck trying to figure out how to go about painting the vision I had in my head.

I had previously looked up Eoin's paintings on Monday and saw that he had some paintings similar to my idea.

Bullet by Eoin McCormack @eoinmclsad

Done by Eoin.

He did a really quick painting with watered down paints to give me inspiration of how to execute my idea.

Over the weekend I came across Jeremy Miranda which mainly inspired my idea for this week. Miranda shows the warmth that Christmas lights bring during dark winter evenings. I find that his collection of holiday paintings truly capture the warmth of the season and the joy that it brings for me personally.

I really enjoy his holiday collection as they go along with the idea im trying to create.