Getting all bunnied out here! It’s because 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit, and soon even more to celebrate about as Chinese New Years is coming up, 21 January. And here I am sharing you yet another bunny painting I made the other day, this time in acrylic paint on scrap paper!
The Start
Here we have a page from my Canson’s Mixed Media sketchbook which doubles up as a mixing palette for my paintings. It is also used to wipe off excess paint or even ink from stamps and also for testing a new color. As the spots of paint accumulate, we end up with a bit of a melange on the paper from which we can recreate to some interesting artwork. Waste not want not! Whilst that was the intention, I further glued on some scrap pieces of collage paper such as wrapping tissue. So far so pretty!
My Cheat Sheet
Normally I would try and sketch my figure directly on the paper with pencil or charcoal. I then discovered another method. Why not design it first on a seperate piece of paper (say the back of a sheet you don’t need) then trace it with a copy sheet? Carbon paper is a possibility, but I found a few rolls of graphite transfer paper by Saral sitting in my storage trunk for years. Need to use them of course! Unlike carbon ink, you can erase the marks if you make a mistake or change your mind.
And away I went! The only thing is, I used yellow graphite paper which was not very clever since it couldn’t show through clearly on the paper which was filled in with all sorts of colors including yellow. I do have graphite paper in black but I could not be bothered to open the storage trunk again and fetch it haha. Still, it all worked out alright, and then making sure I had sufficient natural light, I began with painting outside the rabbit shape to develop it into a negative space piece. I decided to go for Titanium White paint today.
Creating Negative Space
And what is negative space you ask. With negative space, you don’t focus on the details of the subject but rather let the shape of it emerge from the background surrounding it. A great method to go for when recycling and recreating from “paint palettes” as in this case. As I did like quite a lot of areas not covered by the bunny shape, I went about creating other shapes with negative space. Some more paint or collage paper was added actually to enhance the colorfulness. And here we are, my kawaii hidden bunny!
A “quick and easy” painting today. Perhaps in future I might embellish it further by working more on the white background or even recoloring it. Also develop it eye more. At the moment, though, I quite like the way it is because the colorfulness of the bunny and the shapes around her are stunning already. NOt sure if I want to fix something that’s not broken. Sometimes, less is indeed more. Will likely be churning out more bunny artwork soon, but in any case be developing another negative space piece using the graphite paper which really did come handy!
My Kawaii Quarter 