Tags
Aboriginal, Aboriginal art, acrylic paint, canvas, colorful art, connected, dots, hand made, paint, vibrant
Last January, I bought a huge canvas as a gift to myself for completing my Masters degree. Last week, I finally got in the mood to paint! It was finally time to try and recreate one of the paintings I saw in Australia four years ago… the one that I yearned for but was humungous and out of my price range at $4000!
I gathered up my acrylic paints…
Got the canvas set up in the dining room where the light is best…
And started painting. I have done several of these to give away as gifts over the years but on much smaller canvases.
This is the first base coat. I did one more coat after this to soften and blend the colors.
Then I started with the yellow circles… This should look familiar…
When the circles were done and completely dry I filled in the spaces with white dots.
Then painted the border black.
The finished painting:
I hung this huge painting in the back landing. It is a dark area but there is a skylight directly above it which lights it up quite nicely. This is the perfect spot for the painting as it adds a playful and dramatic splash of color to an otherwise neglected area, and it is the first thing you see when you enter through the back door (instead of a bare wall). I love this painting as it grabs my attention every time I walk by and its bright colors cheer me up. The dots and circles remind me of the basic building blocks of the universe (ultimately energy) and that I am connected to all of existence… Simple but profound.
cabinorganic 
Hi , your painting looks great. i think you did a great job. its quite interesting how you did the base coating. i would really like to try and do it also. I saw you used winsor & newton acrylic paints. Can you help me out in choosing the colours – i saw you used crimson and mars black. what about the white and yellow ? Thank you very much
Looking forward to hearing from you
Hello and my apologies for the late reply as I am just getting back to my regular blogging schedule! For the base coat I didn’t want a flat red background and wanted to give it some ‘texture’ so I added bits of black and dark brown to the canvas here and there and applied the red with a smaller brush instead of a roller or large household paint brush. I imagined Australian soil when I was choosing the colors and choose the whitest white and brightest yellow that would stand out vividly against the red background. I like to lay the paint tubes in good light next to each other at the art store and see which ones really vibrate against each other. I am quite an amateur but if you need more ideas and inspiration for this style of painting, goggle “Australia art” images and you’ll have lots of ideas at your fingertips. I did the same, and I bought a few art books on my last trip to Australia. I also visited many small galleries while there and since I couldn’t afford the painting I fell in love with, I decided to recreate it when I got home to remind me of it. Good Luck and have fun! Please let me know how your project goes!
Thank you very much for your kind reply
I will definitly give it a try and see how it goes
I actually live in Australia and I am fascinated by aboriginal artwork , I really like the colours and their combinations . I tried a few times to replicate a few paintings but I could not get those actual colours that were used by the aboriginal artists. I liked your painting very much and i think that the choices you made, the colors you used are great and they worked very well together .
Thanks again for your message
There’s another painting that I saw in a gallery north of Cairns- I can’t get it out of my head and couldn’t afford the $4000 they were asking for it. I’m thinking another project will be in order! This one was a departure from the Aussie red (which I love). The background was a moss green and the dots were brown and in a rounded squarish pattern.