Last week I began to utilise the use of coloured of grounds on a canvas. Different colours have the power to change the hues and tones of different colours and set the mood and location of the painting. The colour chosen as a ground for a painting has the power to show and create a story all by itself, and that’s exactly what happened this week when using a mix of titanium white and prism violet as a coloured ground. After initially painting the first few trees and foliage, an image began to emerge in front of me of one from millions and trillions of years ago. There before me an image of the Jurassic period began to unfold, I could almost hear and see the pterodactyls flying through the sky and the roar of a T-Rex hidden within the woodland beyond.
I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly made me think of such a scene, but I suspect I was subconsciously remembering past imagery from Dinosaur cartoons I watched when I was little.
For the rest of the week I plan to start painting on a much more larger scale bringing in larger and more expressive brush marks which will pose to challenge me throughout the week to come.