This painting is about water and yet I almost set it on fire… All because I got too excited about painting with fluorescent green…
Green is a very tricky colour. Whenever I start using green paint, I get completely stuck or lose the colour balance of the whole picture. I am slowly coming to the conclusion, that I don’t know how to paint with green paint…
The story of this painting starts with lack of space. When you have a canvas, which is 80x120cm, forget painting on an easel. You need 2 easels!
I started painting in Art Escape Studio, but I felt a bit awkward, taking half of a studio floor. In the end I took my painting home, where the only feasible place was my desk. So, I set it up flat on my desk and started painting.
I had to use some weights on the corners, because the wooden canvas was getting a bit misshaped from the moist. Apart from that everything was going well until … I bought the green paint.
It was my first box of fluorescent paint ever and also the first time I was going to use this shade of green. Oh it was so lovely shiny and delicious looking. I got excited and painted big part of my canvas GREEN. It looked so freaking awesome!
The next morning, I decided it was time to take my painting off the desk and look at it properly. Well…I literally hated the outcome (!). It was totally rubbish and I wanted to burn it. The thing is, that when I was painting on the desk, I was focusing on details and didn’t look at it as a whole. Unfortunately, it did not look good at all from a bigger distance….
In the end I postponed the bonfire party for a few days, as I was traveling to visit my family in Poland. Being away helped me get a fresh perspective on the painting. When I came back I was ready to let go and decided to paint over some of the green areas!
It was time to think about my painting as a whole. I needed to find a focal point, return the colour balance and make it flow. At the end of the day it was a painting about the water…
I turned the painting upside down to set the red glasses as the focal point… Then I divided my painting into two parts. Bottom part was going to be repainted and made darker, while the top part was going to stay the same.
My favourite blue paint to the action!
Repainting can be a bit of a nightmare. It hurts covering areas, which earlier took hours to paint. But well… it was either that, or a bonfire…so no mercy ha ha
It can also be very time consuming. Ughhhh it took a lot of layers to get rid of the vibrant colours and the infamous green!
In the end it was worth taking this additional effort to save the painting. During the exhibition I was often told that if you look at it from different angles, the water seems to be flowing. Isn’t that what I wanted? 🙂
Phytoplankton and other drifters
acrylic paints on wood, 80x120cm. 2023
This painting is a part of ‘Don’t Let Them Fool You exhibition’ currently showing at Art Escape Studios in Copenhagen. To read about the exhibition, click below button.
