This week I brought together two of my loves — painting and crocheting.
First published January 20, 2024: This week I stumbled onto Nancy Reyner on the Artists Network site. How did I stumble, you ask? Well last week my art journey took me to a YouTube video of charcoal portraiture, and the artist referred to Artists Network for more of his tutorials. So, of course, to benefit you, my readers, in trying to give you a taste of what kind of classes are out there, I joined Artists Network ($99 for a year, with, according to the site, more than 600 tutorials). The first tutorial that caught my interest was by Nancy. It is called Creative Color. (She has also written numerous books, including at least one about color mixing.)
Nancy does not actually paint any pictures in this tutorial. The lesson is all about mixing colors, and she uses acrylic paints in her demonstration. Her approach is very different from other artists I have learned from. She encourages mixing many colors ahead for a painting, so that she does not interrupt her creative flow mixing new paints. This is an interesting approach to me, since I seem to worry too much about wasting paint. (Nancy has addressed that worry by having little containers mixed for some of her projects.)
What inspired me about Nancy’s lesson was the idea of building a color “family” as you plan what you will paint. The reason that resonated with me is that I am in the middle of a crochet project — a dress for my granddaughter. For the dress I am using a Caron Cinnaman Swirl Cakes — color is called Sweet. It is veriegated with all of the colors that my granddaughter loves. Here is a picture of the dress in progress:
As you can see, the colors make up a really cute dress for a little girl. I thought I would like to have a painting with those same colors.
So in this challenge, instead of thinking about what you are going to paint, you concentrate on what colors you want to use (which is pretty much how I operate anyway in most of my florals, at least).
I mixed up a bit of each and decided to use these in another of my new collection on Spring Florals. Here is what I made:
As you can see, there are a couple of accent colors, but most of the colors in this painting were mixed to match the Caron yarn. I found this to be a very fun exercise. I used some “traditional” colors and some “modern” colors in my palette. (To learn more about traditional vs modern hues you will have to watch Nancy’s video 😉 ).
I am glad I joined Artists Network, and especially glad to have had this bit of an Artventure while taking Nancy’s tutorial. I hope you enjoyed this, and will try it yourself. I would love to see what you come up with!
Happy Artventures…
P.S. If you are interested in the painting, you can purchase it here.