Colour Shaper Self Portrait with no blue by Amanda Bates

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Like it. I have a small colour shaper, and have been thinking - very, very slowly as I usually do - of getting one of the bigger jobs; but I agree silicon is not ideal for spreading paint: how did you find the experience? It's certainly given an unusual look to your work, although of course the different palette helped/contributed.

Posted by Robert Jones, Napa on Thu 24 Apr 06:29:57

you did a fantastic job on this one beatiful portrait xx

Posted by paula bettam on Thu 24 Apr 07:38:43

Very good. Interesting to see you use a different palette of colours.

Posted by Gudrun Ståhl Sharpley on Thu 24 Apr 08:41:41

Thank you, Gudrun, Paula and Robert. Robert, the colour shaper was interesting. It does a reasonable job of spreading an initial thin layer - but can leave lines at the edge of its reach (you can see some of these clearly in the background). Adding colour on top is harder; the control is less (or different) than with a knife, and I found more interlayer mixing. Thick layers are difficult to apply. It has the useful (?) side effect that I used less paint...

Posted by Amanda Bates on Thu 24 Apr 11:16:10

Hang on Studio Wall

13/04/2015

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Oil on paper, vaguely A3 ish, done entirely with the big colour shaper depicted and a limited palette of earth colours (burnt sienna, yellow ochre, terre verte), alazarin crimson and the ubiquitous titanium white. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I work a lot in oils with a knife. I use a little colour shaper to incise details and signatures, but I've found silicon not to be the ideal thing for applying paint. This big colour shaper was a sale purchase and it's the first time I've really used it. This is the first whole painting I have done with it. The colours are out of my comfort zone, too - I normally work with a cool primary palette of phthalo blue, lemon yellow and rose madder. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Oh, and I remembered to smile. Just a little bit.