Let Art be your Escape from Lockdown 1

I, like I guess many people are finding ways to best deal with the Covid19 Lockdown.  For me it's making art.  And through it, making connections with the people and places I love, even though I can't physically be with them just now.  

Fiddling around with coloured paint can be a calming and therapeutic way to escape with imagination and have fun.  So if you've always fancied having a go at painting but never found the time before, now's your opportunity.  I hope to be showing how you could make a start here as Lockdown continues.

Picasso said 'Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up'.  Children see what's important more clearly than we do as grown-ups.  I remember my childhood paintings would have a strip of blue for sky at the top and a strip of green or brown at the bottom to show ground, with  space between where big and little stick people hovered.  Mum had scribbly curls and blue dotted triangle body.  To me this way of seeing has a clarity that seems to make sense in the pared-back way we're living just now.  So I'm trying to put aside all the art techniques I've learned as an adult in an attempt to go back to making pictures in a simpler way.

Come back if you'd like to have a go yourself and I'll try to show you how.  You'll need the minimum of materials:

Scraps of paper or a sketchbook
Pencil
Firm surface to paint on, eg stiff cardboard, smooth scrap wood, hardboard.
Acrylic paint;  red, blue, yellow, yellow ochre, white, black.
1 big brush
1 small brush
Plastic store card or bits of stiff card
Baby wipes
Kitchen paper

You'll notice I haven't suggested painting on canvas or posh artist materials.  And that's because if this is the first time you've made a painting you need to relax and just have fun.  Faced with an artist's canvas you might feel intimidated, stopped from starting for fear of making a mistake.  So use what you have to hand .... cut up a cardboard box or search the garage for scrap wood.  And here's the best thing.  It doesn't matter if you make a 'mistake'!  There's no such thing.....only 'happy accidents' as someone, I forget who, once said.  Not only that.  Acrylic paint is absolutely magical....because you can paint over it with new paint as many times as you like!!!!  

See you next time and we'll get started.
Hugs Bee