Cat 60

Cat 60; itchy cat on the bed.
Acrylic on canvas. 11" x 14".

This is Lizzy scratching an itch on her chin.

On this painting I set two parameters:
1). Use only the three primary colors (yellow, red and blue),  plus white and black; and
2). Use only a large brush to paint with.

The purpose of this was to force myself to expand color mixing, and think more about using brush strokes advantageously.

   Looking over the paintings I have produced over the past couple years, a couple things are beginning to stand out. I concluded I'm over-using color straight from the tube and under-utilizing mixed colors.
The works I feel are most successful are ones where I used a more limited palette.

   Using only the three colors really stumped me in places, as I have become very reliant on grabbing the nearest tube of relevant color and adjusting that as needed. Theoretically I should be able to produce any color needed using the primaries, but I was surprised at how clumsy I was at color mixing. I had to purchase a tube of black, as I never use it. As it turned out, I only used it once to mix with yellow to produce a green.
I found the mixed greens disappointing, and could not produce a decent brown- just a dull, muddy brown. I ended up layering several colors to emulate a brown tone.

  Far more difficult was to use only a large brush. I had to go out and purchase a large brush, as everything I had on hand was pretty small if not outright tiny. My old large hog bristle brushes are so worn down that they are no longer useable to apply paint. They work pretty well as scrubbers, though.
Trying to work with this giant brush was comical. I had a very difficult time with areas where I would normally be using a #0 size. In the end I had to cheat and use a smaller #2 bright for the tight detail areas, and still being a far larger size than what I'd normally use, felt very clumsy. I couldn't figure out how to hold the brush at first, but got the hang of it after a while.