January 31, 2019

I created a flamingo painting. But somehow, I haven’t shown it to you yet. I wanted to, but then we renovated a house, and moved, and I kept postponing and forgetting and anyway, I’m posting it today.

At the time, I had just visited a studio that gives advice on color and style, specifically what colours of clothing best match your skin tone. The consult was a wedding gift. I loved learning about the wonderful world of colour from this perspective. Turns out, seasons are not just these changing things with snow and blooming daffodils. People can be seasons too.

And, apparently not the lack of sunlight, but the navy shirt I wore made me look pale and sick.

I don’t understand why I did learn in school what the French word ‘baladeur’ means [walkman, in case you were wondering] and that the ancient, wealthy Romans would eat so much that they had a feather next to their plate with the sole purpose to make themselves vomit so they could eat even more. Yet nobody educated me on relevant information like how to not look sick, apart from wearing mascara.

I know I’m not the only woman on this planet who gets told that ‘I look tired’ when I don’t wear mascara. It’s my natural face, people.

Long story short, I left the consult with this neat color swatch. It contains all the colours that make me shine bright like a diamond.

 photo Color_palette_warm_autumn.jpg

And so I challenged myself. What if I would make a painting, using only colours that match my personal colour palette? As for the subject, I had already outlined a flamingo. So that much was already decided.

My paintings usually have a more bright, childish feel to them: bright yellows, shiny turquoise, happy pinks. In the case of this flamingo I would have normally reached for pink and turquoise. This time around, I tried to change things up and try some colour tones outside my normal painting palette.


 photo Flamingo_Painting_Process.gif

I actually quite like the result. The slightly muted tones feel a bit more… I don’t know.. mature? Yet it still has a little quirky touch to it with the crutches and everything. If this painting were a movie then perhaps it would have a bit more of a Wes Anderson vibe to it and a bit less of a Disney feel. Does that make sense?

Flamingo Painting crutches

Oh! And! See the black frame? That was the cheapest (and smartest, if I may say so myself) frame solution I could come up with to give it more of a contrast and border before hanging it to our wall. I simply bought a few slats, cut them to size, painted them black with paint I already had (left-over chalkboard paint from another project), and attached them with nails to the canvas. Easy peasy.

 photo Flamingo_painting_crutches_detail1.jpg

I actually created yet another painting that I haven’t shown yet, which I will share soon. And then, the groundwork is laid to finally share what I actually want to share most of all, because I’m dying to show you my super shiny new art gallery wall (including both of these paintings).

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