So enthralled was I with the Liquitex Muted Violet palette that I decided to do a larger version in yet a different abstract style. As a reminder, the colors, in addition to Muted Violet, are Naples Yellow, Burgundy, Raspberry, Twilight, and Swedish Blue plus black and white.

This time I started with a new stencil I was dying to try, Faber-Castell Ice Layers. Normally, if I use a stencil at all it is a mere afterthought and well integrated into the design. But this one was so much fun that I let it run wild all over the canvas. In the first pass, I started with nondescript black blotches, applied thinly with a palette knife, then I stenciled on Muted Violet and, since the stencil reminded me of lattice fencing, I added some Raspberry splotches to resemble abstract flowers.

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Naples Yellow came next, to identify the path of light, along with some Twilight and Burgundy. My path of dark wasn’t quite dark enough, so I threw more Muted Violet on the left, then in the 4th pass I stenciled light areas in the dark with a mixture of Swedish Blue and white, and added a little Muted Violet on the lower right to balance it. I also added two more Raspberry blothches and began to vaguely define the blossoms.

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For the 5th pass, I brought some ferns from my garden and used them as a stamp, lightly, in the lower left and lower middle. When we use leaves as stamps, we need to put the paint on the front of the leaf, where the surface is smoother, and I forgot that on the first try. In the 6th and 7th passes, I continued to refine and tidy up any ugly parts. Finally, I added black spatters at the bottom and white spatters at the top, but they’re too fine to see until you step close.

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This was one of three stencils I bought that day. I can’t wait to use the other two. In case you missed the previous post, here are the first three paintings in Muted Violet. They’re done on 16″x20″ canvases. The new one, “Through a Broken Fence,” is 22″x28″.

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