I love to take painting classes and learn new things. I've been taking a class from Yvette St Amant on 15 minute abstract florals. So I've been painting but first I had to organize my paints. Some of them were pretty old and dried up.
These are little 6" X 9" paintings done on watercolor paper but you could do them on canvas or board. I love the color choices and the way they all coordinate.
She is really teaching the basic principles of design here. Color, balance, rhythm, composition, etc... in her style so you can paint them fast.
I'm only six paintings into a 32 lesson course but already I've found the more you paint, the more your own style gets incorporated into each painting. You can follow along and still change things up. If you don't like a particular color you can change it. If you want to put in more detail, you can.
The backgrounds are really holding my attention and I think are the star of the show. Once you learn how to do those backgrounds, you can use them on any painting with any color palette.
The name of the game is contrast, contrast, contrast. And her colors make them pop. I'm getting so much out of these classes but I'm also learning a new program called Inkscape and laying out surface design for other projects so it may take me a while to move through the whole course.
The thing that slowed me down this time was organizing and cataloging my acrylic paints. I'm telling you some of them were older than my favorite holey granny sweater. Some were dried up and a few of the bottles were concave... yeah, I know. But once I got them catalogued I could tell what I had and it made it so much easier for me to find the colors that I wanted to use.
Believe it or not, I have over 200 colors. And that's just the acrylics. I didn't sample catalog the oils, latex wall paint samples, acrylic strip pots, or my satin, gloss, fancy glitter, metallics, diamond, glazes, alcohol inks, paint pens, loose pigments, pastels, gelatos and color changing acrylics. This is just the 2 oz. bottled flats. I know, right? I'm a paint hoarder and I freely admit it.
