Tag Archives: Primary colors

Primary Play: RED

Posted on by myhappyspace
Acrylic painting of stylized yellow daisies and blue dots on a vibrant red canvas

Acrylic floral painting on a vibrant red canvas

This piece has been in the works for a few weeks. I’ve been wanting to get to it but keep procrastinating, and was just so hard to make time for it. One evening before dinner, I decided to go down to the basement and throw pure red acrylic paint onto a canvas. This was very low pressure and made me feel instant success!

A few weeks ago to get the ball rolling, I challenged myself to use only the three primary colors to create three separate canvases, red, blue, and yellow. I’ve completed the blue and yellow, and Ive been itching to play with the red primary. I’m not sure why I chose these colors, it was just an easy assignment to give myself  and the process has been really enjoyable. There’s no rush at all. Sometimes, I’ll have just five extra minutes in the morning to run downstairs and make a mark. Each moment I have I add something new. One day it was yellow circles. I had these round looking sponge tools and quickly squeezed some yellow paint onto a paper plate and used the tool to stamp yellow circles onto the red background. I had a smaller circle aswell and the following day or few days later added the blue. This morning I started adding some white lines. Here is a close up of some of the details. Looking at these close ups I almost want to recreate these cropped versions on an entirely new canvas.

Funny how things are organically created this way. I love how I had no plans for this piece. My goal was to get some painting into my days and have some fun. These aren’t even colors I have around my home. Not anything I’d buy or hang. My house is very white and neutral, with the only color coming from my blue velvet couch in the front room, or down in the basement where all my paints and most of Liam’s toys are located. I guess the inner me enjoys these pops of color, since that’s what my intuition has been guiding me to use.

I’m looking to play with these colors freely, paint like a child, and not worry about the outcome. This is definitely an ongoing process and I’m so curious to see how this plays out.

Primary Play: Yellow

Posted on by myhappyspace

Primary red, yellow, blue, acrylic, bubble wrap, palette knife, elements, linesI love how this piece turned out. My intention was to play with the three primary colors, yellow, red, and blue. I felt happy and energetic when I started working on it. I began early one morning, before the school or workday began, by applying some yellow acrylic paint. That was all I did at first, and then I left it alone.

Every day or every other day, I pushed myself to go down to the basement and take out another color. I would spend just ten or twenty minutes at a time working on it. I’d go while dinner was simmering on the stove or while waiting for Amir to come home. I added some red and experimented with mixing it with the yellow, creating different marks. I used bubble wrap and a palette knife, allowing my instincts to guide me. Then, I would leave it alone for a while, thinking about it occasionally. I’d go downstairs when I had a chance to look at it without adding anything new.

This was definitely a slow process, with no pressure and no specific goal or destination in mind. What I truly enjoyed was the journey and the patient waiting to see where it would take me. For a couple of days, I knew I wanted to add blue. I envisioned blue as my accent color, technically, my “10 percent” color! I’d go down and gesture my hand up and down, without any paint in my hand, waiting for something to guide me to the perfect spot for that blue. It almost felt like I had a metal detector, waiting to find the ideal place to drop that blue color down. It took me a while actually and thats normal and these days I embrace it. I used to feel that I had to know exactly where my piece was going as soon as I picked up a blank canvas. That’s far from the truth. Understanding this makes the process of creating art less anxiety-filled and more organic, something that just happens naturally. In the end I decided to use my blue Posca pen. I love these pens and they are so fun to use. I added vertical blue lines along the yellow brushstrokes. Some little circles and leaf shaped lines. I also cut a piece of blue tissue paper into a circle and a yellow one and layered them down with some collage glue. I also added some unexpected brown paint at the end I used some old stamps I had created with a circular cut out sponge and one was a little rectangular piece of wood you can see I stamped looks like little rectangular stepping stones. All of these little marks and strokes were unplanned and unexpected, like going to a playground all by yourself and then other people show up and you all start playing together and have the best time! Again, I wish I had taken more pictures of this process, but part of this process is the spontaneity of me randomly going down to the basement and not having the pressure to perform. There’s one more piece I want to create to finish up this series.

20×20 Mixed Media Acrylic Canvas

I have one piece with yellow as my base color, one with blue, and I am considering using red as my next base, but I’m not sure yet. Or maybe green? Showing the journey of yellow and blue mixing together? We shall see!