Double Rainbows

And now the final of my three-part Rainbow Project! This was all inspired by a BBC article I came across about kids in the UK creating paintings of rainbows and posting them up on their windows during school closures resulting from the COVID-19 crisis. I have already painted and blogged about Reverse Rainbow followed by Top of the Rainbow. In the first painting, I inadvertently had the rainbow reversed and then decided to do a correct on in the second one. This third one is combining both!

Pencil Sketch

Along with the other two paintings, I used some huge paper. A sketch was made in pencil of what I had in mind, two half rainbows side by side with an angel in between. One was in reverse, the other the correct one. I give credit to my boyfriend who suggested this brilliant idea! On the sketch, note how I initialed R for red and V for Violet so I don’t make the same mistake of getting the colour order reversed!

Painting Away

That was the fun part. I firstly coloured the background blue using Ecoline ink to achieve a light transparent result. Then the rainbows! This time, I went for Golden’s Fluid Acrylic because I wanted a smooth even look but strongly-saturated colours which would be difficult to achieve if using thinned-down acrylic paint from the tube. I still wanted to thicken it a bit to avoid being too runny though so mixed them with some acrylic medium. Whilst I tried to stick to the colours I already have, I mixed colours to get orange, indigo and violet. Looking good so far!

Pretty Angel

And another fun part! First I painted the angel’s face with acrylic ink, combining Sepia and White. The hair was firstly drawn in water-soluble oil pastels (Neocolor II) then brushed lightly with a wet brush before adding streaks with Sepia ink directly from the dropper and spreading with a thin stick. Some texture was then added as I spread some Coarse Modelling Paste on her wings and Glass Beads on her halo. Then I painted the wings in White Metallic by ARA and the halo in gold acrylic ink. When the white paint was dry on the wings, I gently spread some of the gold ink with my finger.

And here is the whole picture. Isn’t it cute? I’m very pleased with it! The colours are so vibrant and just what I had in mind. And the angel is looking so kawaii! Adding texture on the wings and halo was a huge success and the angel really stands out without outshining the rainbows.

What a fun challenge that was, having the opportunity to paint rainbows and seeing what we can create from the whole colour spectrum. I may consider even posting all the three rainbow paintings on our windows and get the neighborhood started! After all, that was the original idea of this Rainbow Project by the kids.