We have got to be creative in times like these and one thing that I am grateful for is being able to pick up the old paint brush again.
A few posts ago I shared a couple small paintings I did, both in the grey scales and a touch of color. I must say that I do enjoy the grey's and blacks and I wanted to explore that a little more.
I have been seeing people use Q-tips to paint leaves on trees and thought I would give that a try on a bigger canvas. One thing I like to paint is trees and back in the day when I enjoyed my time drawing, trees were also a thing I enjoyed among other things like skulls and things with wings, blah blah blah.
In my other paintings I had used one of those cloud brushes that took the form of a circle. This time, in order to create a different look, I took a flat brush and dipped it in black, white and grey (all on the brush at the same time) and just slapped it on with small strokes as to not mix the colors together... er shades.
Doesn't look like much right now and the picture wasn't well taken. I was painting outside with the kiddos and the sun was reflecting off my phone as I tried taking the picture hoping for the best.
I did the whole background and added a few touches were it was feeling too muted and made sure the sides, top and bottom of the canvas (the frame) was painted too. I often forget to do that.
Next step is to plan out the tree.
Here, i basically did a rough paint sketch of where I wanted things to be, knowing that i would be fine tuning it later on once I'm happy with it. Once again, sorry for the quality of the image, it's a bit hard to catch.
I had 4 Q-tips, not sure if there's a certain number of them to use that works best. My logic was; good things come in threes but sacred songs are sung in fours. Anishinaabec culture, songs are sung 4 times so my gut feeling was go with 4 tips. I dipped them in bright red, yellow and white. I thought orange as well but thinking the red and the yellow would mix in at some point. I just dabbed away at the canvas following the branches.
I worked at it more in this picture and to be honest, I hated it. Looks like a mushroom tree and does not flow naturally and it felt like I couldn't get that with the tips. I had to make some changes to it. I thought of scrapping the whole thing, I thought of painting over it, doing the leaves like I know how to make them. I contemplated all that a lot and finally decided to just go with it, with what I already have done.
I decided that the white had to be minimized and it needed some darker red to make some dimensions to it. I also added more to the top to help the shape a little more. Once that process was done I fine tuned my branches, added a couple extra to help make it less flat. I thickened the tree trunk and then started working on the base.
I always like giving an eerie look to things and a friend shared an image with me where it looks like its dripping or has the roots showing of sorts, has a waterfall and whatnot so I thought I would give that a try as well. So, taking a Q-tip again, pulling the tip apart so that it's hairy, dipping it in black paint and taking long and short strokes to make the look happen.
Once the roots thingy was painted on and some grassy areas were done, I went with the red bloody waterfally look. Not happy with that either. I thought maybe I should put more runs with the other black ones, make more drips and such but this is something I can't just cover up if it doesn't look good as it messes up the whole bottom if it doesn't work out. Sometimes it is best to leave things as it is.
Perhaps it's because it doesn't make sense to have running liquids in an image like this?
My experience with this has not been the greatest. It's not my style as I feel it could have looked better with more realistic looking leaves. Perhaps my colors of choice didn't work with my background. Honestly, it didn't match the free flowing feel to it, it felt restricted.
Have you tried this style? If so, what do you think and care to share an image of your art work? Let me know what you think in the comments and please care to give some constructive criticism, perhaps you can tell me where you think I went wrong, should have or should not have done.
