It's a new year and I'm already starting a new decorating project here at home: transforming the hallway that leads to the entrance of the house, which also serves as an entrance hall.
This hallway is all white, but one of the walls had been painted an ochre color and I was getting a bit sick of that look. So I decided to take advantage of the fact that I had a lot of leftover and unused paint at home and make a change.
These paints were sent by a Brazilian brand, for other projects that I've recently shared in this community, such as the headboard and the backyard mural.
Unlike the previous times when an artist friend did the paintings, this time I decided to take a chance and do the drawings myself, even though I had little skill or experience and didn't have the ideal brushes for this project.
Anyway, it was an unpretentious diy, without much planning and done to occupy my mind in the last days of 2023.
I started covering the ochre paint on the walls with white paint and up until this stage I still had no idea what was going to happen in the transformation. I had a sort of mantra in my head that said "paint the wall white and then you'll feel it, you'll see what happens". And so it was.
I think seeing the blank wall reminded me of a blank canvas and there I had the feeling that I could be free to create whatever I wanted. Literally anything. I let the desires of the moment and my feelings that day guide my hands. It was an intuitive painting that just came into being on its own.
I started drawing the rabbit and its surroundings with chalk, as if it were the main element of the work. And without worrying too much about what I would draw next. The colors were also chosen as the drawing was being created. Everything was very organic, spontaneous and intuitive.
After the main drawing had been done with chalk, I filled in all the outlines with paint using the brushes I had available at the time. As I'd never done this before, I feel I didn't have the right brushes, but I managed as best I could.
Although I wanted the rabbit to be white, I made an effect with a mixture of grey paint, using this color as a base. I would then repaint the rabbit with the same white as the wall, on top of the gray. This helped to give it a sense of shading.
After the main drawing was finished, I gradually introduced other symbols that made sense to me at the time. The bleeding hearts were elements I wanted to include in this painting, because I think they are very symbolic. And the drops of blood could only water a very flowery garden, which is how the idea of the branches and flowers came about.
And that was the end result. The good thing about painting without planning is that it's much more enjoyable and fun, but the downside is that as I was inserting the elements as they came to mind, the drawing wasn't exactly symmetrical. But even so, this method seemed more interesting to me. Not least because I was more concerned with expressing myself in some way than following any kind of rule. This drawing taught me a bit more about letting go of control.
See ya next! 🐇