One of my Christmas presents was a book token from my brother. I ask for them every year because books are my crack. My Amazon wish list is so long now it’s getting a bit silly.

Anyway, one of the books I bought {thanks Ben!} was Mati Rose’s ‘Daring Adventures in Paint’.

I heart it! Mati is a girl after my own heart with her love of the sea and all things nautical. I’ve loved her paintings for quite a while now, and while I don’t want to paint just like her {for all the obvious reasons}, I was intrigued to see how she pulls a painting together.

I devoured the book in about an hour, then took it up to the studio to try out some of the painting ideas. These photos show the process.

It was night time I’m afraid so the colours aren’t very true.

Mati shows the process of a painting from start to finish, something I have done in my book actually but not in quite the same way. But I thought I’d challenge myself to follow along and see what happened.

Not least because although I have a couple of paintings on the go at the moment, they are getting sticky and a bit of new energy is sometimes just what’s needed to get them going again.

Mati’s approach is layered, like mine, so I was familiar with all the parts even if I hadn’t put them together in that way before. There was laying down colour in two opaque layers, using contrasting cool and warm colours. I started with orange and then a deep aqua blue {natch}.

Then there were layers of brayering {orange and white}, using a squeegee {old credit card, pink}, dry brushing {white} and some vigorous sandpapering {as shown a couple of images up in front of the light}.

Next, collage pieces.

Then Mati did some silver leafing, but as I only have gold leaf and wanted to use silver in my painting, I made a fish stencil quickly from cardboard and used some pearly acrylic to make fish shapes.

Then spray painting through a doily. I also changed my mind about the main fish shape and whited it out.

Mati adds drawing into her piece using carbon paper. I leafed through some of my sketchbooks for inspiration, and in the end found it on my pinboard. See how I’ve made it nice and clear for you to see which image I chose. 🙂

I’m not usually one for repeating images in all my paintings {apart from circles, but that’s like breathing}, but I do like doing these stylised feathers. I used my actual feather cut to a point and Quink to draw the shapes, and painted them in acrylics.

Mati did a couple of things to hers that I didn’t do, like getting someone else to collaborate, and adding in a personal reference from a childhood photo. I was happy with the painting by this point, although I left it overnight to be super sure, and then signed it this morning. Boom. Done.

I called it Three One, partly because of the three feathers and the ‘one’, and also because I’ve been thinking about the Trinity a lot lately, so it seemed fitting.

Only ten days {and oh how I’m counting!} til I have the internet installed at home and no longer have to sit outside Jeanne’s house in my car writing blog posts and checking email! Yay.