I am wildly embarrassed and humbled…

I have recently started putting paintbrush to canvas again. It’s been quite some time… the last time was perhaps 5 or 6 years ago where I painted quite a few textured coastal pieces and gifted them to family members. Actually, it must have been longer, as I can see in the example photo below that I’ve signed my maidan name… Good lawd, does that year stamp say 2012?! Okay… so I was incorrect… it’s been over 10 years…

Here’s a photo of one of them, for reference:

And then for some reason I stopped. When I think about it, that’s probably around the time I decided to properly attempt and learn watercolours, which eventually lead to my preferred medium of gouache. Until now though, I haven’t really done anything with my watercolours or gouaches, other than use them for some personal stationary.

That brings me to now. I’ve had quite the dose of confidence, thanks to Cass Deller’s Surface Pattern Design course. The course is totally worth every penny, by the way! From growth mindset, to uncovering your style, to the special guests, to the actual technical side of creating, it’s such an amazing course. I don’t plug anything unless I think it’s worth it – and this is. Now, in the name of complete transparency, I am a part of the Cass Deller affiliate program – but I would tell you to join even if this didn’t exist. If you’re keen – I recommend following this link and joining the waiting list: https://cass-deller-design.mykajabi.com/a/2147501887/s38kp5zw and better yet, if you use my code RENAE, you’ll receive 10% off the course!

On top of gaining some confidence back and because I’ve been painting most days for the better part of 8 or 9 months now, I have improved a great deal and have received positive feedback from friends and family. So, I thought, maybe it’s high time I returned to acrylics and learnt what is required for creating high-quality pieces and actually put some effort into creating wall-worthy art like I’ve always wanted to.

I decided a little while ago that this is what I want to do, on top of my surface pattern design. All a part of the diversification of this creative business. I also want to make some stationary – watch this space!  I tell you what though, I have sat on the idea of painting canvases since April-ish. It’s now August. I’ve dabbled here and there, researched a lot (like, A LOT!) but mostly I’ve just bought supplies and then sat staring at them, wondering ‘what now? What do I actually want to paint?’ It’s been a bit confronting, wondering about what my heart wants to paint, trying to find inspiration. Nothing has struck me down though. With my surface designs, I often get hit with my next painting in the dream-state that lives between awake and sleep. That’s the thing about inspiration though, isn’t it – it doesn’t come when you force it to or when you need it to… it hits you in the middle of the night, mid busy life, mid sleep. And then you sit on it, let it grow, let it change. I think I have been trying too hard to find inspiration for my canvases – nothing has come to me. Yet.

So, I’ve been waiting and waiting for my intuition to lead me the right way, but so far, nothing had really popped up. So, I made the decision to take my own and others advice and just start, because a great deal of it is learning technique anyway. I couldn’t make any decisions and I felt nearly paralysed by the lack of direction. So, I narrowed down what I love and decided to have a go at painting that and seeing how it changes and moulds to become my own style and hope that inspiration will feed off what I am doing. Like most Aussies, I love the Australian landscape, particularly of the coast and of the Granite Belt (Stanthorpe area), the combination of colours that come alive at sunset and how the glow is thrown across the land and bush. But I also love unique, abstract-y landscapes and portraits. And then I also love fruit and textured art too. And I’m obsessed with pastels and brights… so that left me with a couple of options.

I’ve started off with landscape. I really, really love sunsets, so wanted to have some beautiful sunsets in my canvases. If you’ve ever tried to blend a sunset, you’ll understand when I say that painting a decent sunset is far harder than one would think. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to just use straight acrylics or mix them with a grainy medium. Here’s some photos of how those first few canvases went:

What a disaster! It’s okay - you’re allowed to scoff and laugh. I am wildly embarrassed and humbled to say that painting landscape canvases did not come immediately naturally to me like I had originally expected – ha! That’s ok! Back to the drawing board. It became clear to me during the painting of these pathetic attempts that I needed a reference and that the paint wasn’t going to flow from my hands with inspired accuracy (sarcasm). I decided to try to draw something up in Procreate, where I could easily delete and erase mistakes, and ended up with this reference:

Huzzah!

I liked how it looked. It had the sunset and the pastels and some Australian-style farming landscape. It’s obviously not the end goal, but it’s a start - let’s give it a crack!

What I learnt during the painting of this canvas was the following:

• The canvas, even if pre-primed, literally drinks up acrylic paint like a woman lost in the Arabian desert for three days with only two litres of water to survive on. Ya gots-ta-be quick before that paint dries…. Perhaps I should try oils instead?

• I really do not like seeing the texture of the canvas show through the painting. That’s a personal thing for me, I don’t know why I don’t like it, I just don’t want to see the texture of the material. That meant applying a number of coats of gesso. I also tried a moulding paste, but not convinced I love it

• Pencil lines can be removed with a cotton tip and water – don’t use an eraser, it just smudges it!

• Fluid Acrylics are amazing for mixing with gesso if you want your undercoats to have some colour to them. I wanted my painting to have a warmth to it, so I used the colour ‘Australian Sienna’ from Matisse’s fluid range and added a touch in with the gesso

• A light sand between each gesso layer is a great idea and gets rid of any of lines from when it was applied

• It’s ok not to paint over the edges… I always thought I had to extend the painting over the sides of the canvas, but this really is not the case, especially if it is intended to be framed

• When you are learning to paint decent sunsets, it’ll take hours and quite a lot of attempts – just an FYI, that blending takes skill and practice, I’ve still got such a long way to go. This painting took me three nights to get right and I still don’t 100% love how it turned out

• I love texture in the paint – applying it thick is a must! Adding in impasto medium is also fun

• The layers absolutely need to be painted in the correct order… it’s all fun and games until you are trying to paint around something that shouldn’t have been painted yet and takes far longer than it should have

• Structure Acrylics are the bomb, highly recommend Matisse and Liquitex if you are starting out and want something better than Monte Marte

• Always buy four times as much white paint as what you think you will need! Maybe more…

• Palette knives are way better at mixing the paint compared to using a paintbrush…

• New paint brushes suck… and makeup brushes are great for blending

• Two coats of varnish is enough if you are using a Matte coating… be quick, it dries quickly!

After all that learning, here is the final painting:

Not bad for a first attempt!

Destined for the kids bedroom, I think!

I’ve only completed this one painting from start to finish. I’m going to paint another one, so they’re a set and then frame them and hang them in my children’s bedroom. I’m a total beginner, even if I have dabbled here and there in the past. This was the first time, ever, that I’d bothered to prepare the canvas properly and apply varnish and do everything to the best of my abilities and as recommended by professional artists. I have soooo much to learn and am well aware that this will not be where I end up. Instead of letting that hold me back though, I am going to trust in the process, know that I will keep learning alllllll of the things, and that if I keep at it, inspiration will reveal itself and my skills will continue to develop. And hopefully soon, I’ll be able to release a quality collection that others love as well!

And to be honest – I think I’m going to love looking back at this painting in a year, two years, five years’ time – and seeing how far I’ve come.