Sustained Investigation #9

"Magical Maui"

5" x 6" x 0.5"

February 6th, 2020

So for this project I really wanted to focus on the texture part of my question because I feel like I have been lacking with that part when I make my projects. So to fix that I painted the water with a palette knife, I mixed a bunch of colors and then layered and layered them with a palette knife. this work relates to my life because I took the picture and it was from my christmas vacation last year.

First I found a piece of small stretched canvas that had already been painted on. So I got the acrylic gesso and painted three layers of gesso over the old paint. then I painted the sky a gradient blue because the sky in the picture wasn't just one color. Then I mixed up so more blue-green shades and tints and layered those on top of eachother with a palette knife to create texture. After that I mixed some shades of grey and started painting the clouds. I started with a dark grey and then kept layering lighter shades on top of that until I got to plain white. I also tried to copy the pattern of the clouds in the picture. After that I got the green and made a little grass patch in the bottom left corner and the shadow of the island behind the clouds.

The only experimenting I did with the project was when I painted with a palette knife because I had never done that before and I had never used a stretched canvas that had already been painted on. I think that the color in my work are really saturated and strong as well as the shadows and highlights which helped my project evolve. I think my next steps could be adding a rainbow or more patches of grass on the very bottom.