Just a quick and easy abstract floral painting I wanted to share here. Whenever I am working on a piece, I like to mix my paint on a blank piece of paper as if it were a palette. The same goes for wiping off excess color off my brushes. Or even when I want to test a color out on paper. I repeat this process on the same piece of paper, adding layer after layer, until it is so colorful that you don’t want to throw it all away but rather recycle it by recreating! So what have we here? And as Spring is well under way, I was in the mood for some pretty flowers!
The Palette
And how beautiful and colorful is this palette! It was all on a page from my Canson’s MIxed Media Sketchbook. These are mainly acrylic paint but also gouache, inks and even scribbles from markers. Amazing mixture of vivid vibrant colors. How could I possibly want to toss it all away?
Creating Negative Space
Artists like myself would typically recreate color palettes similar to the above by creating negative space. That is when the background becomes the subject as its shape emerges upon painting around it rather than inside it. As said before, I was in the mood for flowers because of how stunning the color combinations were. But how many flowers? And positioning? I didn’t want to lose many of the areas although I didn’t care much for the bottom part of the palette. So how about just one big flower! The area around the shape was then covered in two layers of titanium white acrylic paint.
Adding Texture
First I painted in the stem with Emerald Green acrylic ink before going over the outlines of the flower petals with white Molotow marker. Some green glitter glue by Marabu was then spread onto the stem by which time I thought why don’t I add some texture on the flowers too? I hesitated using more glitter and then acrylic texture mediums came to mind. For the center of the flowers, I applied some Liquitex Glass Beads with a palette knife, followed by Golden Clear Tar Gel for an thick extra glossy appearance. The results unfortunately are not so apparent in the photos but with the naked eye, amazing. And here I have it, the single flower, so stunning and colorful!
Though quite a simple painting again, I am very happy with it. Working with vibrant colors brings out so much energy, and the result does indeed radiate positivity. I’ll definitely be doing more similar negative space painting again with used up painting. Waste not want not, right? Let’s see what other surprises we can come up with together!
My Kawaii Quarter 