Midnight Blossoms

You maybe thinking “flowers again???” but I guess am in fact in a bit of a flowers phase at the moment. Remember it’s nearly late August, and come September, Autumn will be along the way. And then we’ll have no more pretty flowers for a while. So why not make the most of it whilst the season lasts? Furthermore, I was keen to experiment on something new. I happened to have some left over paint from my last painting, and as the colours were rather bright, I was keen to wipe them with a palette knife on some black paper!

I have a pad of black paper from Daler Rowney used mainly for sketching and pastels. Always using white paper, I was curious to try something different. What would it be like on black paper? Unfortunately I only had the 150 g/m paper as I use at least 200 g/m for mixed media so I had to be careful not to pile up too much or soak the paper. Nevertheless I decided to fill. up the paper a bit more with bubble wrap stamped in ink, soft pastels mixed with acrylic medium (to avoid smudging and fading) and oil pastels, making sure the colours were light, bright or pastel shades. Then brushed a thin layer of clear gesso to prepare for next layer.

I didn’t have any real direction for the painting which made it a lot more adventurous. However I had flowers in mind but how to fit them into the scenery? I just took some chalk and started drawing random flowers and circles as well as one triangle to see where I’ll go. Once happy with it, I traced the outlines in white acrylic paint.

I began filling in the shapes with various shades of acrylic paint including red (Carmine), blue (Bright Blue), pink (Magenta), yellow (Azo Yellow Lemon), and orange (Vermilion). In some instances, I mixed the paints with their corresponding fluorescent shades to bring out the colours. The paints were mixed with Gloss Gel to enable transparency so the layer below could show through. Then I retraced the outlines again in white acrylic paint.

Seeing that the painting could do a bit more, I stamped more bubble wrap patterns in some areas randomly using some pastel shades like pink, blue, green and orange, especially inside the flowers. Then finished it all up with Uni Posca’s paint markers by adding dots in the flower shapes and doodling small flowers in the background. Now I could safely say it’s complete!

Not bad for the first attempt, I must admit. And great experience to paint on a totally different coloured paper for a change. Something worth developing on especially as we prepare for the darker months. Would be also cool to see what happens with other coloured papers. Or how about coating paper with black gesso?