Abstract art project - so close to completion...

I have been working on this for a few weeks now. I was inspired by the heart that I painted on the paper mache canvas in this blog post. I really enjoyed doing my little bit of art on this so I decided to do a full canvas in the same style. Nothing too complicated as I know I can’t paint actual things but I thought some sort of abstract piece of different colours would work ok.

I had a quick google for some inspiration deciding that I wanted to do something with 6 colours similar to the colours that my little drawers are painted in my craft room.

This was the image I used to get my inspiration for the design

So I drew out my design on the canvas I had

It’s a start - a bit like the design on the phone case but I didn’t really want the corner section to be quite as big as the pinkish bit on the phone so there was a little improvisation needed to try to get all of the sections to be similar sizes. It turned out something like this.

Ignoring the line that I scribbled out on the bottom left.

I decided that the easiest way to keep my edges straight was to tape off to where I wanted to paint up to. No stencil required just plain old masking tape this time. This obviously means that I can’t work on any 2 spaces that are next to each other at the same time.

I started with the 2 diagonally opposite and went for blue in one corner

 The thing I had worked out from doing the stencil paintings was that I needed to make sure that I went right up to and over the edge of the but also make sure that nothing swedes under so I always painted away from the tape but made sure I had a good layer right up to the edge.

 Taking the tape off is the best part. Look how clean the line is. So pretty!

As I already had the blue on the go - now seemed like a good time to mix some red in and try to make a purple for the opposite corner (I squirted our to much blue for this bit so may as well make use of it).

 Not a perfect purple but the best I can manage with my limited colour mixing skills. I’m not sure what could be added to this now to make it any better. From primary school I know that red and blue make purple so thats what I did!

 Mixed with the white it looks ok.

 And looking at the picture as a whole the colour is definitely growing on me.

Now to wait for these to dry (there seems to be a lot of this from here on out)

Yellow next, right in the middle so nice and easy.

 Taped, painted

 And tape removed. Still so magical every time!!!

I was really pleased with this one that my colours hadn’t merged or leaked in any way into each other and even against the existing colour already there the lines looked straight.

Orange next. Again harder to mix than you would think. Maybe I should have added more yellow to make it a bit lighter but the white would help with that too so here it is.

 It did lighten quite a lot with the white streaked into it. Just the outsides of this picture still looking a little far but most of that was on the tape.

 When the tape was removed it didn’t look quite as far and I think it did become more orange looking than the sort of burnt orange, darker shade I had feared.

Red was next obviously after some more time for everything to dry yet again. Easy peasy- no mixing involved. The only thing I was slightly nervous of with the red was that it could bee easily become pink if I wasn’t careful. So I tried my best not to mix anything up and to just streak the colours as much as possible.

 So far so good - I don’t think it’s gone too pink

 Once I removed the tape I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I shouldn’t have put red right next to the orange...

Hopefully it’ll look better once I add the black tape to divide it all up. I also dropped my paintbrush - whoops! Luckily it went on the bit I hadn’t painted yet so it should get covered over ok.

Finally I’m now up to today’s work and dilemma. I started working on the green. I thought I had mixed a pretty decent colour with as much as the yellow as I could get out of the tube I had left and as little blue as I could manage to make it an ok shade of but also to bulk up the quantity of paint I had as much as possible to try to make it so I had enough to cover the whole area.

 Possibly I added a bit too much blue and made it a bit dark but I knew it would all blend in with the white anyway and lighten up.

 Here goes. I started painting and I think the colour looks ok. Not too bright green like maybe I should have gone for but as light as I could with the small amount of yellow paint I had left. It was all going so well...

But I always underestimate the amount of paint that is needed to cover these in the way that I’m doing it. As I’m not really spreading the paint but more like blobbing it on it does use a hell of a lot.

 So this is as far as I have got. I look the tape off to stop it drying on and getting stuck but this section really isn’t at all finished. All of the other paints I had and tried just didn’t make anything like a similar colour either. They all went too blue when I added any yellow to try to lighten them up and almost ended up turquoise or just looked horrendous.

So this is my dilemma. I’ve been loving working on this project and would have been almost sad that I had finished it anyway if I’d got the green done tonight but at least at the weekend I could have put the black tape on between the colours and had it completely finished. What do I do with the green? I could make a straight line roughly where I finished the painting and add another colour but then I’m not sure what colour I would do as my drawers only have these 6 basic colours on them. I guess I need to wait for the new paints I have ordered to arrive from Amazon at some point next week so I can use the green that I ordered there and go over the green I already started (and extend it obviously)  or mix up a new green from the new yellow I’ve ordered and try to make it similar to this colour. So frustrating! I’m sure I’ll work something out but this has really made me mardy tonight. It’s just so frustrating!

Hope you’ve all had a good day and your week is going ok. Stay safe and keep doing the things you enjoy where you can. I’ll update you again soon.