Our Neighbour's Cat ‘Woggie'
Artists Palette|No 167
If you follow this lady’s advice, you will try anything and everything to get the results you want. Do not be afraid to mess things up! Sometimes you need to get it wrong before you can get it right.
Liz McCann
Our Neighbour's Cat ‘Woggie'

STEP ONE

This first step can take many months to achieve. I can do dozens of small sketches before I arrive at the composition that best expresses what I am trying to convey in the painting. In these drawings I will look at elements like movement and rhythm, and interesting negative and positive shapes (including shapes that echo other shapes). I try to vary the sizes of shapes to stop them all being the same size – which would create boring areas in the painting. At this stage, nothing is set in concrete; and I nearly always make changes after I have transferred my ideas onto canvas – as I can then step back and view the drawing from a distance.

STEP TWO

Once I have transferred my idea onto the canvas, I outline all elements in a mixture of different colours. This is random in some areas and intentional in other areas where I know I will be juxtaposing them with contrasting complementary colours or discordant split complementary colours. At this stage I have a vague idea of which colours will go where, but this can and does often change, as I continually analyse colour relationships in the painting. Even at this stage I am not afraid to change or go over something I think is not working. Next, I start to block in areas of solid under-colour.

STEP THREE

This story is from the No 167 edition of Artists Palette.

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This story is from the No 167 edition of Artists Palette.

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