(Top row: collage, bottom row: acrylic on canvas)Again I struggle with mixing colour (indeed, the whole point of this exercise!) It seems that I have the basic hue more-or-less correct, but getting just the right tone/shade eludes me... most things are just a little too light or a little too dark...
In the few paintings I have done, I tend to layer colours until I am satisfied. This tends to give the effect that the painting is lit from behind, or maybe that light is shining through. Ultimately, layering colours gives a multi-dimensional effect, which is how I see colour anyway (colour is never just ONE, imho) When I use one layer of colours as in the paintings above, to me, they seem a bit... well... flat. A bit lifeless.
Kind of funny, that result, because the collage seems to have a bit more "life" than the paintings, when I might expect the opposite! After all, a collage is just snipped up bits of paper borrowed from an old pile of greeting cards...
All in all I prefer the collages to the paintings, though I'm not sure exactly why; they just seem "right" where the paintings seem a bit... what's the word... forced? Ugly? And another problem with the whole set is that the collages are A3, and the paintings are U.S. 12" x 16" pre-fab canvas sheets... something I hadn't considered until I was drawing the composition on the canvas (there's a slight distortion in the paintings that I didn't really compensate for, when I should've "trimmed" the composition to fit the canvas...)
So, yeah, I probably won't include these in my portfolio! Because one might think these are the first paintings I've ever done in my life. LOL.
(p.s., though I do enjoy collage, I really don't enjoy landscapes or other paintings with no people in them, maybe that's why this project wasn't THAT much fun in the end.)
