I based my painting off of a “special place” or happy place I would love to discover one day. In one of my high school classes we were required to write a one page paper describing a place that made us happy without directly naming what it was (ex: a theatre). So I had decided to write about a forest with a secret cavern in its rocky walls. Originally, before this project was assigned, I wanted to paint a series- a map of this place. This is because of the fact that I later wrote a longer story based on my one page paper that was a journey through a forest, a cave, a cavern that was open to the sky, and some water slides hidden in the water of the cavern. My bricolage for this assignment is a painting of the first piece in the start of this series. The first piece of this painting series is the forest at the start of my “written journey.” To start my bricolage I gathered my materials: paint brushes, a canvas, water, a cup, napkins, some bottles of paint and a couple painting trays. I first outlined a trail that branches off, a cave doorway, and a waterfall in pencil on my canvas. Then I colored the background of the painting. I painted the background brown for the dirt aspect of the forest and I filled in the sky to be a pale yellow, since the picture is suppose to be set at dawn. Next I added in some trees based on the second video of the rushing waterfall. I then looked up a tutorial on how to paint a waterfall. I liked both of the videos attached below and how the painter designed and colored the waterfalls. I used his outline and color scheme as the basis for the waterfall in my painting. In my painting I used a couple different combinations of white and black paint. The waterfall has more of a heavily white mixture. Then I finished watching the hidden paradise video to learn how to paint moss and growth on the rock walls in my forest. Using dark green and a medium green mixture, I painted the background of all of the overgrowth in my bricolage. This tutorial also helped me to understand how to paint the leaves on my trees. I then added bushes around the trees, waterfall, and stone walls. I filled in the background at the end of the path between the walls. Finally, I added some bright green to my piece and shaded the bushes, leaves on the trees, and growth on the walls. Then I added some flowers to the bushes and overgrowth in the painting. I used red, orange, purple, pink, and blue flowers. Using the small paintbrush I delicately added these flowers to the bushes and moss on the walls. Most of my bricolage is based on my own idea and plan to paint my “happy place,” but I used a few elements in the tutorials I found online to aid in detailing my work.
The audience these videos are tailored to have a long history of painting. This is true because, while the author talks very slow and gives very detailed directions, beginners wouldn’t be able to paint some of these very difficult and articulate pieces. However, he is very direct and slow with his directions, so he is able to tailor this video to a much larger painting audience.
When making this bricolage, I did not follow the tutorials to a tee. This is because of the fact that this is just how I paint and make art. Even if I had followed the instructions exactly, I wouldn’t have been able to come close to recreating the paintings in the videos. My final product was not aimed to copy the painting in the video, so my piece turned out entirely different. The instructions given in the video could be improved to include all the steps used to create the painting, because most painting videos skip the parts where they outline some of the main parts in the final piece.
Preview YouTube video Paint with Kevin Hill — Hidden ParadisePaint with Kevin Hill — Hidden Paradise
