“Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.”

 

Here's some inspiration from our community and all the different ways our recent prompts are being interpreted!

"I had a few ideas for DARK. One was a silhouette of clothes hanging on a clothesline between two buildings but I couldn't really get it in my head properly. And then I thought about some other silhouette ideas - maybe cutting out shapes from dark paper and pasting onto the white. I couldn't get a handle on that idea either.

 

I ended up finding a starting point by wiping a brush that had been sitting in dark paint water onto a sheet of paper. I thought I was just drying my brush but I kind of liked the color - a brownish taupish muddy thing - so I filled the paper and then put a little bit of glitter on it. When that dried I scribbled some trees with black sharpie and a big round oversized moon. I scribbled in the moon with the sharpie and painted white gesso over it. I looked at the piece for about a day and thought I was done but then decided to put eyes in the trees peeking through the darkness! It's a little odd when all is said and done but I had fun!!"

 

“The other thing I've started which is quite dark on part of it is an oil painting - it's my first attempt with oils since probably college. I can't actually remember the last time I used oil paint (maybe it was even in high school) - I just know that the smell was very familiar to me!! Anyway it's a self portrait work in progress. For the dark part of it (the shirt) I'm going to try to put some creases in the black with lighter shades of black/gray. The whole thing is an experiment in dark to light and thin to thick. So very different than acrylics. The wait time for drying is a challenge although it's kind of nice to come back hours later and find my brush still usable and my palette with wet paint still on it. 😃👍” - Claudia

“This prompt is “Season” which made me think of “Tis the damn season” which made me think of Taylor Swift’s autumn reel from a few years ago. I wanted a quick contour line sketch with the text and it just fit.” - RS 

 

"September Prompt 1: Ease. This is really just an easy watercolor exercise. But I still like it.
Needed an easy one so I can get caught up." - Mitzi Almost caught up! :) If you're catching up as well, keep at it! (And we are continuing our 2 week per prompt schedule though December so I hope that helps a bit!)

This wasn't what I originally envisioned for “Dark" but I did use a technique that I had mentioned which was tracing shadows! I happened to begin this page in the evening and as I was playing around with the pressed flowers, I noticed the dark shadow it cast on the paper because of the overhead light. I traced those shadows and that was the beginnings of this page. The inspiration was my stay in Sunriver & Bend, Oregon so I tried to use and capture the different elements of nature that were all around me: rocks, bark, dirt, different colored leaves, the pine trees and greenery, sky, rivers and rain, and the deer! 

 

I'm now in Washington and able to settle down for about 6 weeks so I have unpacked my car and my plan is to take all the supplies I brought (way too many 😅) that come in black and create a page with them. I love the classic black & white combo so I want to maybe try playing around with negative and positive space.

 

And I did get a chance to work on season and was inspired by all the gorgeous Autumn leaves in OR! It has been such a treat to experience this. As a Southern CA native, seeing fall foliage has been on my bucket list for many years! I always thought I'd have to go to the east coast to see this (and still want to--maybe next fall!?) but totally forgot I could experience this on the west coast too!

There's still one more week to discover dark inspired art or use it to catch up on past prompts. Take your time and see what ideas call out to you!

 

Have a great weekend and we'll talk soon!