Monthly Painters Challenge – Opposite colours

I entered a new challenge this month, the Monthly Painters’ Challenge over on Facebook. I was honoured to have been accepted into it in April and I spent most of the month pondering exactly what I was going to do for it.

The challenge was ‘Opposite Colours’, and my initial thought involved a few creatures emerging from a colour wheel and fighting it out. It was a good idea and I could have drawn it, but I felt it was too cartoony and if I did colour it, it would have been in watercolour and my current bunch of art is in acrylics, so I pondered some more.

I then decided I wanted to see if I could use opposite colours in my butterfly painting mosaics (B is for Butterfly and Paper mosaics). The difficulty in this is if you add two opposite colors together, you tend to get mud.

Another challenge – Artist’s Playroom – was doing Darkness and Light that particular week and I made an attempt for that, but failed to create in time. But what I did do was do some butterfly paintings in black and white, and I quite liked how they turned out. The reason why I didn’t make the challange was because the idea I had in my head didn’t work as well as it could have and I didn’t have time to rework it. I’m thinking a specific challenge per week is probably too much for my crazy schedule.

I almost used the black and white mosaic for this challenge, but I wasn’t happy with it and it is still sitting on the side of my art desk quite neglected.

So then I threw together a couple of butterfly paintings specifically for this challenge – yellow and purple in one and orange and gold green in the other (the second one was just because they were new colours to my palette and I liked them, but they aren’t true opposite colours). I figured that if the purple and yellow made mud, it might be salvageable mud. And it mostly was.

By this time it was the last weekend before the challenge and I hadn’t even really started. I didn’t have a cohesive design in my head, but I did have Mother’s Day weekend with Hubby sponsored time to paint, so I made a go of it.

I came up with a concept and went for it. Unfortunately half my Saturday was mangled by a migraine (happy Mother’s Day, ugh), so I lost some of my time. Sunday was a good day and I got some done, but Monday and Tuesday were bust, so on Tuesday I meekly handed up my unfinished work.

But I quite like it and intend to finish it after I complete my daughter’s mermaid painting.

Here are a few in-progress shots and I’ll also celebrate Paint Party Friday with this as well – don’t forget to visit all those fantastic artists over there, and drop in on the Monthly Painter’s Challenge Facebook page to see all those who did finish this challenge.

I’m really happy with the mosaic part of this. The yarn is 100% acrylic yarn and I’m still working on exactly what kind of texture I want to get out of it. I’ve done some test examples where I’ve coated it thoroughly in self-leveling gel and I might do that. In any case, interesting experiments lie ahead. Oh, and I have since ripped off the white wool as it was bleaching out the design.

Best wishes,
Liz