Summer of color: the last week!

Watermelon ... My absolute favorite fruit on a hot summer's day .... And for the last week of the Summer of Color we may use those colors: a bright red with dark spots.

The nice thing about this challenge is that it makes you use colors or colorcombinations that you normally wouldn't consider. I tend to go back to the same colors over and over again, but now I realise that there really ARE more color combinations that I like, and will be using in the future. For instance: I have a tendency to avoid brown. But in 2 challenges we had to use dark brown, or chocolat brown. And I must admit that I like it. It gives a kind of warm glow to the other colors, and adds a touch of contrast to the bright colors I normally use.

So today I was making a kind of greenish, bright colored edge around my painted figures, and I didn't like it. So, since there's dark brown in watermelon, I decided to use that as a kind of shadow. And I like it so much better than the green edge. I will definitely be using more of this color!

This is the background I started out with, a mix of acrylics and spray inks:

It was difficult getting some contrast on there, because only very little brown was allowed. So I painted the background in different reds, and sprayed some dark brown ink on there. And then I covered the whole thing with plastic wrap. After leaving it on for about half an hour (it wasn't dry yet), I took it off and got the most beautiful patterns. I love this technique!

I saw a bird right away, although I wasn't sure I wanted to be painting over that pattern. But then I saw a face too, and decided to go with it.

And since I had a reddish page in my art journal too, I decided to make another drawing in there. Done with Inktense pencils and plain old gesso:

Well, that's the end of the Summer of Color! It was a fun challenge, and I hope next year Kristin will do it again (hint ...).

Since I have so many small paintings now, what with all the challenges I've been doing, I will focus more on painting boxes and on bigger paintings in the coming weeks. The 2 boxes I made for my customer in the Netherlands have left for their long journey yesterday. I do hope they will arrive safe and sound...

I want to thank all of you who have come and visited me over the past weeks. I so enjoyed reading your comments, and visiting your blogs. I hope we'll keep in touch, even though this challenge is finished.

I will be back in a few days with my box in progress (or maybe even finished...!)

Love to you all!