Inspiration post....More is More!

Hi everyone, Ruth here with this weeks inspiration post and having dabbled with blues and greens for my 'Bright Side' journal pages, I thought I'd crank it up another notch and use pink and orange in abundance! Here is my 'Inspire' canvas...

Those of you who know me are aware I will try and LOVE all sorts of styles but I'm usually a less is more sort of artist and a vintage palette, soft colours and lots of white space are my niche....however there are times when a riot of colour is needed.

As I chose the challenge I wanted to encourage you to use bright colours and share a way of using lots and lots of zingy hot shades without it being overpowering and have you reaching for the sunglasses!

Firstly choose colours adjacent on the colour wheel, pink (a tint of red) and orange are great together, so pick out  a few of each. I'm using PaperArtsy fresco acrylics, my go to...they dry fast and have a mix of opaque and translucent colours and when it comes to layering you need a mix.

I adhered a piece of 8x8 Canson mixed media paper to some grey board and roughly brushed some slightly diluted Blush paint all over as a base. Patchy is fine, just get a little colour on. Next choose some stencils, I used bubble gum at first, one of the darker shades and an opaque. I start darker and then lighter paints will help knock back if needed. I picked out some matching archival for later stamping.

I kept some areas mainly pink, some mainly orange and some a mix. This is Coral, one of the darker orange shades and a translucent.

I added Bougainvillea (the darkest pink shade) and rose and then Tango. I hope you can see the layers building and where the translucents are, showing the colours beneath, I think this is where the 'magic' happens, how the depth gets created retaining a lightness in the layers.

I always used to think that the darker shades would be opaques and lighter shades translucent but it's frequently the reverse, a lot of the lighter shades are 'tints', colours mixed with white and white is opaque so most light colours are opaque.....well that's my thinking anyhow!

Then you start to fill up the gaps with tiny stencils, in retrospect I could have stopped at this stage and would have been happy but I hadn't used any stamps and wanted to test how much was too much.

Adding in the stamps gave more depth and more interest for the eye to travel across, I also finger painted with some white gesso, just dabs which lifted the piece.

Some may call it a hot mess....but it sure makes my heart sing....lovely bright colours on a grey day! I decided for some extra 'pop' to coat with a couple of layers of gloss glaze sealing it all in nicely and giving a lovely sheen.

Instead of mounting on greyboard, you could just use the mixed media paper and treat it like a master board, using sections of it...but I wanted it to be a piece of wall art. I looked through my mdf words and found 'Inspire', just perfect. Painted with a mix of bougainvillea with an addition of blueberry and black and then swiped with black archival before glazing with a pearl glaze creating some lovely texture.

When it comes to mounting, this is where I would use white space and have a deep mount and a simple white frame. I haven't framed it yet but the way I've photographed it in this last pic hopefully gives an idea of how it would be viewed and not appear overpowering.

What do you think? Tempted to have a go at using bright colours....I can highly recommend it as great fun! R x