The Very First

This was the first painting I did. The first two paintings for the class that introduced me to all of this were done on paper rather than canvas because my teacher didn't want us to get too overwhelmed. This project was meant to get us to experiment with every tube of paint and every brush we had in our arsenal. Nothing on the page was to come straight from the tube.

This is what I created.



The idea was to make about eight jigsaw puzzle shaped sections on the page and then use your paints and media and brushes to get the feel of the whole thing. When it came time to critique I was a wee bit late to class and only had the furthest end on either side of the wall to post mine. I put my piece up and realized all of a sudden how completely different mine was from everyone else's.

They had their eight shapes. Each shape a different color with a different media. I had only used the shapes as a guideline. There is the hint of shape... but not so much the shapes that I began with. My teacher started with me. "Tell us about your piece."

I said: Mine doesn't look like anyone else's.

She said: There's nothing wrong with that.

Exactly the thing you should hear in any creative course.



The rule was that we had to use at least three different colors when we mixed. And I came up with some vibrant stuff. During our classwork my teacher came up to remind me of the three color mixing rule. I told her I was following it. "This blue here? I mixed all the blues together and then added a dash of white to brighten it. This red is all the reds mixed together." I suppose it was cheating in a way but I got what I wanted. And besides, I did mix other colors together.

I just needed some of those colors to pop! And pop they did.


I got the scratching effect with palette knives. Palette knives are great fun to use and this was my first chance at doing so. You can see, though, that there is more color that just the bending the rules method I used. Dark violet blues near the bright blue. Deep blue green next to a bright yellow green and a dusty orange. I was quite proud of what I did because it made everything more interesting to look at.


My teacher had a great fondness for my 'juicy brushstrokes' like the above. And below. She said my style was akin to Fauvism. I painted 'like a wild beast.' Who was I to argue? For all my years of drawing, putting paint to paper and then to canvas changed my life completely. Suddenly it was more than making something look exactly like whatever it was you were drawing. There was movement! And color! And contrast!

This was a whole new world. And I was never the same.