Denise showed us how to paint with a limited colour palette and taught us about the ‘Mother Colour’ technique today.

We warmed up with a line drawing using the paint brush to draw our brush pot in three colours. I had said out loud at the start of this class that I would be 'loose caboose!' this week. Admittedly I'm not entirely sure what that even means but I was intending to be more freer in my painting than the week before.
However after looking at my quick brush sketch I realised I was still being quite contained with my painting so... that's okay - more to work on for the rest of the class...

I chose to use cadmium yellow as a base and colour for my mother colour. This is the colour that will be mixed with every colour in your palette for use in your painting. I started painting and I was quick to get the background colour down, I chose to work from another photo from my trip to Great Dixter. Lovely vibrant orange heleniums, I thought the acrylic paint would lend itself really well to this image.

 

I enjoyed painting impasto, spooning on large quantities of paint is so different to my usual delicate watercolour painting, so this felt like such a good moment of flow.

I noticed I was reverting back to my old constrained style as I tried to paint the detail of the flowers so turned the canvas upside down to get a different perspective, this really helped unblock the perception of what I was painting

I didn't have time to finish it but I do know my hand is freeing up and I am really enjoying painting with acrylics.

I am learning how to paint in acrylics with artist Denise Harrison. You can read more about her here.