Strange Art by Jeremiah Palecek

I start off by blocking in large shapes, value, and color. I only use three colors (plus white) for all my paintings. Red, Yellow, and Blue. I do my underpainting in acrylics because they dry fast, and are easy to apply. I mix all my colors in a cookie pan. Believe it or not, I painted all of this one brush, a size 8 flat sable. My teachers always got annoyed that I wouldn’t use more brushes, but I m annoyed with the idea of having to mix colors with a palette knife, then load up the correct brush with said color. I just dip my brush into the can of paint, slop it into the cookie pan, slosh it around until the color i want is achieved, then smear it onto the canvas. At this point I m not too worried about having anything perfect, this is just a rough sketch, the skeleton upon which the final work will begin to hang. as you can see, I have my laptop to the left of the canvas, as well as my nice little optical mouse. Using photoshop I can zoom in on my collage, and move around the original collage to see more information about what I m painting. I also always print out an image to hold in my hand, so I can look at it, and not take the 3 seconds it takes to look at my computer. To the right of my canvas you can see my cookie pan, and tubs of acrylic paint. You may be thinking that the hardest thing about this first step is the drawing element of it, and you’re right, drawing is annoying, but hey, my only advice for that would be to draw. It’s really the only way to learn how to draw. sorry, theres no magic tricks you can use for that part.