Another challenge! Shades of White?

28/11/2022 by UKMA 1 Comment

So another member of the art group I am on issued another challenge… using White and Shades of White. She says:

Colour combination: White and shades of white .

Allowed:

• 1. One additional metallic colour (gold, copper, silver etc).
• 2. You can use dark papers to pull the prints.
• 3. There must be an end use of at least one print (so cards, tags, decorations etc).

Tricky!

After mulling it over for a while, I decided I would begin with book papers. I like the idea of that rather than the dark paper background. I created an overlapping grid from a few different books, so different text, different colours, etc and tied it all together with a watered down Gesso wash.

I collected up a handful of whites and what I think are shades of white – titanium buff and a pale grey. I dithered about using other close to white shades, like a very pale blue or pink or very pale green or coral. I felt like keeping to neutrals was more in keeping with the challenge. Gold was my metallic, although generally, silver would likely be the “obvious” choice. I did add white to those shades to make them even paler.

I did a swipe of the titanium+white and then the grey+white thru a stencil

I was a little stymied as to the way forward, but I tried adding some paint pen circles thru a stencil.

It proved my point, which was that adding the bright white over the shades made it pop nicely. But where to go from here? It feels too early to add the gold, but I feel like I can mix the gold in with some of the other shades to alter it and give a different tone. So I might try that. And to be honest, I am kinda loving this as is – I mean it isn’t a finished piece, not yet, but it feels like it is going in the right direction!

After the catastrophe of the Navy + Red attempts (and no-one will convince me they were anything but fails, so don’t even try! Although try two was less awful than One was…) this is a huge relief. I don’t feel like I have to work hard to “bring it back” but I do need to be careful not to let this go off the rails!

I’ll take a breath before moving on…