Who says that you need brushes to paint a picture? There are all kinds of ways of applying paint to a canvas. Let me share some with you.

My First Canvas

Saturday morning, October 25, 2003. I joined a class of young painters at a community centre, and we were each handed a 20x26 canvas, some acrylic paints, and some brushes, the widest of which was 1/2". I loved the large canvas and the brilliant acrylic colors, but what was I supposed to do with those baby brushes? When I start a picture, I like to finish it in one attempt before my mood changes. With those brushes, I would be at it for the rest of the year.

Necessity is the mother of invention. I rummaged around under the sink and found a fast food restaurant plastic spoon. I used the back of it to apply paint to the entire canvas, creating a large yellow sun in the centre surrounded by a limegreen sky. Don't complain about the sky. I was thinking about the sun breaking through trees in a forest, and that was the color which felt right to me.

Now What?

Okay, the canvas is covered. My very first canvas. Now I need to paint the forest in front of that sun and sky.

Some more rummaging, and I found a matching fast food restaurant knife in one of my pockets. That will have to do.

With the yellow sun paint still wet, I pulled streaks of sunlight radiating from the sun over the whole green sky. The serration of the knife gave a great effect of streaming light.

Serrated Forest

That knife worked so well that I decided to finish the picture with it. I picked up various colors with the edge of the knife and applied them to the canvas, creating spruce trees. When I stepped back from the picture, the trees looked alive because the various colors blended, not on the canvas, but in my eyes, just like in any impressionist painting.

I put in some undergrowth shrubs and finished up with colorful rocks of the Canadian Shield, all done by plastic knife.

Even though a large area of my picture is covered by sky, there is no blue to be seen anywhere. These are the colors which I used: white, yellow, Naples yellow, alizarin crimson, lime green, Hooker's green, and purple. I did not mix any of the colors but let them blend together on the canvas in the way that impressionsists paint.

The whole picture took 2 hours to complete. Everyone was happy with it, including the teacher. The other students in the class were still working on their canvas three weeks later, trying to apply the paint with the baby brushes.

From the next class on, I started bringing an old 3" house painting brush to class, and everyone in the class borrowed it from me, at least to give their canvas the initial undercoating.

Example

This oil painting "Starflower" was undercoated sparsely in white with a large brush. Then yellow, red, and blue were applied in the background with a plastic knife. The brown color was created where the three primary colors mixed. The white petals were then added with the same knife and the dots in the middle were created with an old wooden chopstick.

I donated this painting for a silent auction to raise money for an art gallery. It was one of the popular choices.

Invention

Necessity is the mother of invention. Look around to see what you have in the kitchen or any other part of the house. You might come up with imaginative tools for painting, too.

© Traute Klein, biogardener