50 shades of Green

Materials: 

a.  Canvas measuring 60cm X 45cm;

b.  Daler Rowney, Graduate Acrylic in Gold Imit, Hooker's Green, Mixing White, Neutral   

     Grey, Phlato Blue, Phlato Turqoise, Primary Yellow and Raw Umber;

c.  Daler Rowney, Flow Enhancer;

d.  Daler Rowney, Texture Paste;

e.  Palette Knife and Brushes; 

f.  Mixing Palette; 

g.  Sharpie (Totally unnecessary); and

h.  Sketch Pencil.

I stumbled upon an art piece of a peacock on pinterest which I thought was stunning. Unfortunately it was sold at (an exorbitant) USD2,400.00. So I decided to just paint one. And maybe sell it for half that price? 

First I started by just sketching the head of the peacock. 

Then with a palette knife, I laid out some texture paste on the left side of the neck. It is pretty much like spreading nutella on a slice of bread, really.

After the texture paste dried, I painted the whole portion with a mixture of gold imit, hooker's green, phlato blue, phlato turqoise acrylic paint. Neutral grey, mixing white and raw umber followed for the eye and beak.

With more texture paste, I created embossed circles and feathers. Then came the fun part. I again, took a palette knife and started scooping and laying out basically any colour, anywhere I fancied, starting of course, with a coat of primary yellow as base. If you are certain you'd be needing more than one layer of paint, it is alright to mix your base colour with water and flow enhancer, saves paint (and cost).

Finally, I added gold imit and hooker's green with a tiny bit of mixing white, at all spots I deemed right.

And that was how this piece came about. It looked nothing like the piece I spotted on pinterest by the way, so there may be more peacock paintings coming up!

Moral of the story: If you can spread nutella on bread, you can paint.