Colour Bugs

Now that the squad is selected, it’s time to follow up that trial of the reds with a full scale workout for the new set of colours.  Rather than have four shapes for the four red candidates, I now have nine bug- like shapes, one for each of the primaries in my palette.

I still wanted to mask out the shapes so that my main focus could be on colour mixing rather than filling out shapes, so I started by drawing out nine bug- like shapes, varying their size, shape and orientation.  I then negatively masked them out with masking fluid and added some spots and lines to them using masking fluid in a mapping pen.

And then I coloured it. all in.  There’s a hierarchy to the colours in there with reds above yellows above blues and with warmer colours on the left and cool on the right, resulting in a red/orange feel in top left graduating to blue/green in bottom right.  After the masking fluid came off, I added antennae in viridian.

I was careful to measure this one out so that it could be framed and put up for sale.  I really like it.  It was very relaxing to paint, not needing any mid-painting decision making.  I need to start thinking about more ideas for rainbow paintings like this featuring all nine primaries.