Week 11
- shanestephensartist
- Jun 9
- 1 min read
Colour Play and Creative Inversion
This week was absolutely wonderful — playful, vibrant, and full of surprises. I really enjoyed myself, especially working with bold colours and discovering how masking techniques can shape a painting in such a crisp, deliberate way.
Instead of starting with the background like we usually would, this lesson flipped everything around. I painted the foreground and main subjects first, then added the middle ground, and lastly, layered in the background on top. It felt a bit backwards at first, but it was such a fun way to reimagine how space and imagery can work on the canvas.
Masking allowed me to create sharp edges, clean shapes, and bold contrasts — useful for both abstract designs and more illustrative styles. I loved how this technique let me experiment with layering in a totally new way, where what’s usually beneath becomes the final touch.
Sometimes flipping the process opens up a whole new perspective — and this week, it did just that.
Other Relevant Works:
I found inspiration in works like Jacqueline Humphries’ Untitled, where graphic repetition and layered stencils build tension between what’s seen and what’s partially hidden. Similarly, Carole Benzaken’s (Lost) paradise(j) (2008) overlays dreamy imagery with a veil of white patterning — like memory being filtered or erased. Both reminded me that masking isn’t just a technical trick — it’s a way to play with perception.
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