Hello my loves and thanks so much for tuning in to another limited palette painting video.
Thanks also to Squarespace for sponsoring today’s video.
They are the all-in-one platform for building a great online presence, from blogs, to portfolios
to online stores, but more on that a little later.
For now, we’re continuing as we have been in the previous few hue-related videos.
I’ll have the video for the first set of these paintings linked on screen now if you’re
interested in finding out more about what I’m doing.
So, I’ve come to expect the first painting of the day to be a bit of an underwhelming
one.
I need to warm up and get into my stride a little, and that was the case with this one.
We’re obviously speeding through it for now, but painting these trees actually took
me over half an hour, just for the trees and no other part of the painting.
I don’t know how or why it would take that long, I think I was just a bit slow and out
of practice.
The colours for this first painting inspired me to paint a swampy scene.
My initial plan was to go for more of a mangrove-looking situation, but I changed my mind last-minute,
and just decided to wing it with this new idea.
Because of that, I hadn’t really thought about how my values would work and how I’d
be able to separate one element from another, i.e. the trees from the water from the background,
so that’s an issue I ran into a little later.
I’ve also found that these kinds of colours are probably my least favourite out of all
of them, these almost toxic greeny-blues.
I’ve heard it can be quite difficult to get a non-synthetic but still bright looking
green with watercolours, and this was one of many times I’ve experienced that for
myself.
That being said, there are some beautiful, earthy greens coming up in this watercolour
set, this first painting just puts us in the award middle ground between beautiful blues
and lush greens.
Another thing I noticed with this painting session, is that I have a habit of going in
a bit too thick with watercolours on the first pass, which leaves me with dark blotchy areas
and lots of streaking, even some areas that are still shiny once dry.
That’s just a case of me being impatient and wanting to get to the darkest colour possible
on the first go, when it’s normally a lot more effective to keep layering washes until
you get what you’re after.
I went though a lot of different thought processes with this one, times where I really liked
where it was going, times where I thought I’d ruined it, the only consistent feeling
was that I had no idea what I was doing.
But pretty soon after starting, I’d already decided that this was just a warm-up painting,
so none of it really mattered, and that freed me up to just do whatever I wanted.
And in the end, I quite like it!
I finished this painting thinking this would be one that I’d go back and re-do, but looking
at it a few hours later, I think it fits in quite well with the rest of my favourites
from this short painting series.
So it stays!
Next, I decided to go for a river painting.
Looking at it now, I think I could have pushed the river theme a lot further because it ends
up as more like a mountain scene with a river running through it, but I did feel a bit more
warmed up with this one, a bit more relaxed, and just more open to enjoy the process and
experiment.
I keep having to remind myself that that was the point of these paintings in the first
place.
I’d like to adopt more of a line-less and simplified style into my work, but not to
this extent, I’m just pushing it as far as I can, to see what I like, to see what
I can do with it.
I don’t see these paintings as a part of my body of work, more as kind of studies,
which is why I keep debating whether or not I’ll sell them as prints or in any other
capacity.
Part of me thinks they’d look great all together, but another part of me doesn’t
see them as something to be out there representing my art.
I’d love to know what you guys think of that, it’s always really helpful and refreshing
to get other peoples opinions when I’m stuck.
This painting went a lot quicker than the last.
I was really enjoying using a slightly larger brush, these are new ones sent to me by Princeton
a little while back now- I’ve only just had a chance to give them a try- and you just
can’t beat that new-brush-feeling.
Just everything falling into place as it should, being able to be so precise, and these hold
such a perfect amount of water.
I had some nice relaxing music on, which is a change for me.
It might not seem like it from these speed-paints, but I’m usually blasting some utter rubbish
while I paint and sing along out of tune.
But I was in the mood for something different today- sometimes I am- I generally just decide
once I’m in my art room what I want to listen to, if anything.
And today, I really specifically wanted to listen to classical piano music, and it took
me ages to find the right kind of classical piano, like I wanted to listen to something
like Clair de Lune, but not Clair de Lune.
I know I’m going off on a tangent now, but if anyone has any Clair de Lune- esque music
suggestions, it would be much appreciated for next time I’m in that headspace.
Okay, and finally, this was one that I thought I was looking forward to, but once I started,
I realised I didn’t really have an idea for it.
The colours made me think of a meadow, but the thing about meadows is they're so… busy
and wild and hard to simplify down into flat objects and shapes.
I was building up a kind of process though, throughout these paintings, so this time,
I was pretty quick to get into it.
I knew I wanted to use negative space, which is always fun, but that’s really all I had
planned for this one.
The rest is just a bit of a journey in just doing what felt right I guess.
[Music; When All Else Fades - Sam Eber]
I’m surprised, because I really wanted to like this one.
It has potential, for sure, I like the concept, I just don’t love the execution.
I’m actually quite looking forward to trying this one again, seeing what I can do differently.
Before we finish, I just wanted to talk a little more about Squarespace.
It’s kind of wild to think about how easy it has made it for creatives like me, like
a lot of you guys, to do the best we can with whatever it is we’re putting out there.
I have this, sleek, professional platform, totally customisable, to be able to share
my work, to showcase the things I make in a room in my house, to the rest of the world.
And the fact that I can have a fully-functioning shop built in has just made the business side
of things so easy.
I just love that it’s all in one place, so consistent, AND anything I need help with,
they have 24/7 customer service.
It’s taken all the fear an doubt and confusion out of the often more stressful side of being
creative online.
I’m really glad I listened to all the other artists that have raved about Squarepace in
the past, I actually used one of their discount codes to get 10% off my website, and it’s
pretty cool that I’m now in a position to offer you the same deal; you can head over
to Squarespace to get a free trial, and if it’s right for you, go to squarespace.com/minniesmall
for 10% off your first website.
Thank you so much for watching, please do let me know if you have any questions or suggestions,
and I will see you soon for the next video!
Bye!