How To Paint A… random composition (part two)

The other week, I went through?áthe steps I took in making a painting with no source material. Using random marks and composition, I allowed my intuition and previous painting experience to guide whatever happened next. In a similar manner I have made another example to share with you here.

I started with paper, two tubes of acrylic paint, and I think just one smallish brush. I hit the paper with some random marks in black.

I decided to go grisaille at this point. Grisaille is the method of painting in black and white… and greys. You can then glaze colours on top if you so choose. I will show this process next week.

I lightened everything up again by brushing in a bit of white. This added some subtlety to the greys.

Then I took my black paint and worked in some darks again. I started to see something…

Using some more watery-black, I painted in some stems, some shadows in petals. The painting was becoming flowers.

I worked in another floral shape on the right, and then watered my paint down much more. I painted in a background. This added weight to the bottom of the composition, and complexity, as well as the suggestion of other things happening.

However, as part of the process, I opted to white-out a lot of that background. More subtlety needed!

Once again, I mixed up a grey and added it in, bits and pieces.

Again, I worked in dark paint to suggest weight and some sort of background. By painting in the negative-space I also emphasized the objects. Note the fine edges of white here and there: those are not painted in, rather, those were left behind when I painted in the background.

Finally, I painted in some more white/light grey. Again, note the dark edge I left here and there, that was the previous step’s background being left to show through.
I plan to glaze some colour into this composition, as I feel there is still something rough about it. Colour can help cure problems within a painting. So next week… see you then!
Natasha Henderson, Montreal

Related articles

• How To Paint A… random composition (part one) (fleurbain.com)