I’ve been working on another acrylic painting but this time my inspiration came from a magazine clipping I was going to use for a collage. I like to brainstorm a little before I start working directly on the wood or canvas. So I have these little panel board canvases to work out ideas on. The shape I had cut out from the magazine is the larger shape on the bottom right. I used the same cut out for the bottom shape as I did with the top red shape. In the end I really ended up liking my small scale painting but it was time to see if I could create something similar but much larger.

In order to see the same tiny magazine cutout shape, I had to use a grid to create a bigger template. I wanted the shape a certain size to fit this larger piece of wood. So I created the shape out of newsprint and began the painting almost the same way as my study.

I wanted to use oil and acrylic in this painting so the red shape at the top I decided should be oil to compete with the busy lower right shape. I also added a strip of grey oil next between the yellow green and the deep purple acrylic. One thing I wanted to definitely keep in the painting was the large pink flat stripe of color. I was expecting to make changes to my original thoughts. So as I kept making these changes by masking out shapes and lines I realized that the top red oil paint shape was no longer necessary. The scary part was it was still wet of course. I didn’t want to just paint over it because it contained a lot of texture and because of elongated shape of the wood I didn’t know what else to put there. Plus I was a little limited for time because I wanted to put it in the Advanced Painting exhibit in the Kresge Gallery on April 4th.

One of my professors that also said the large red shape wasn’t working with my painting anymore brought up the idea of just cutting it off. So I gave it some thought over the weekend and when I came back I decided that cutting it off was the right decision. I went down to the wood shop and bam it was like I came out with a new painting. Sometimes it hard to make such bold decisions but when you do it feels great!