Draw and Paint What You Love is now over {until the next one, in October}, and this is the process of my final painting. I wove together my own ways of painting with what I’d learned about colour theory and painting techniques over the past five weeks.

It was fun and it was work {but the fun kind, which I guess is also called play}, and although I feel I could add layers to it every day for the rest of my life and not ‘finish’ it, I reached a point where I was happy, and I signed it.

I wanted to paint on a canvas this time {I’d been painting on paper throughout the course}, so I used this old painting that never got finished and I never really liked:

I started with layers of underpainting, to cover up the old one and to give depth to the final piece.

I always like that part; just zoning out and adding marks and colours without needing to think about it. It’s meditative.

I learned a lot about making different kinds of marks during the class, and have a new appreciation for the different kinds of energy they have and expressions you can make.

I love this stage because there’s no pressure. Just paint, just play, see what happens. Everything is cover up-able.

I chose an image I found online as my reference {another thing I learned about ~ references and how to use them. Sounds so obvious but I wasn’t doing it in the same way before}.

I just kept painting layers and turning the canvas until I could see something I could work with.

Which in this case, was boobs.

I employed another thing I learned {seriously, I have SO many things in my toolkit now} to map out the figure using negative space as well as some line to build the form. And then I layered and mixed and layered and considered the light source and layered and mixed, and got some very helpful feedback in the classroom, and then boom. She was done.

Stretch : : acrylic painting on canvas

And I called it Stretch, because she is stretching and it stretched me to paint it!