Fearless Friday, Getting Started

the Painted Apron

8 years ago

One of the hardest parts of the painting process is simply getting started

I am often inspired by a photo, an experience, a color, the way the light falls on something…and often my mind is so full of ideas I literally “can’t see the forest for the trees”

At this point I turn to one of my favorite organizing tools, Pinterest, and create a board to organize my thoughts, to actually see my ideas and inspirations all in one place. This helps me decide on my final start point or composition

I am in the process of doing a painting for DD’s birthday. She created a secret Pinterest Board, which she invited me to share, so we could both pin ideas to the same board. I also created a non secret board so I could share it with you here.

This is the space above the love seat that she wants to place a large abstract. Her home has a serene color palette of grays and whites

Breaking Waves in the foyer is visible from this point

And you can also see Falling Gold in the kitchen

She wants a very simple abstract in tones of white. Her style is contemporary modern, clean lines, uncluttered, minimal

Alot of the paintings on the Pinterest board are colorful, like this one above by Beatrice Dauge

And this one, below from Cerese Arts

I pinned them because I liked their composition

The colors would transform from bright hues to tones of white, cream and gray

I use small jars of sample paint when doing a large canvas, which is a real $ saver

These 8 oz. devine color paint jars from Target are $5 versus a 4.65 oz tube of heavy duty Liquitex acrylic at $16+

I also use the 8 oz sample size jars from the paint dept at Home Depot, you can get a variety of colors for about $3 I use the cheaper stuff for the underpainting and first layers, and save the pricier paint for the final finishing layers