Sometimes the very idea of doing something is more appealing than the doing. I’ve wanted to try out the electronic painting on my PC for a while now, but the idea of it has so much potential: sometimes just starting to work on something ruins it and you discover that your ideas have turned to dust and all the potential you have hung onto for ages in that germ has vanished.

Of course, doing nothing with an idea makes it just that: an idea – so unless you begin to explore it what potential it does have, it has none. So I decided I had to start seeing whether I could paint electronically and if these ‘sketches’ would allow me to explore ideas I could take onto physical canvases later. I was keen to use some of my colour diary palettes, so I have begun with one painting. I wasn’t really sure where this was going to take me, but I just played with the programme and mixing the colours. I cheated a teeny bit by adding some white. I wanted to make an area of ‘hope’ in the frame and felt the cream colour wasn’t light enough. I saved ‘stages’ of the work when I remembered.

For a first attempt it isn’t bad. It is the sort of colour that I breathe in and absorb. That refreshes and invigorates me and I enjoyed the colour mixing and end result.

There is an element of this picture that reminds me of Philippa Stanton‘s work I saw in Art of England magazine last year. She is synaesthetic artist and the work they focused on was a commissioned series of single malt Whisky paintings – portraying how they tasted to her.

Other contemporary artists who deal with mood/colour/abstraction in this fashion are Paul Bennett whose work is based on abstracted landscapes. The titles for these pieces have fairly simple and non-challenging titles, but for me they look like Hades, Dante’s Inferno or some sort of final look towards the sky as one descends into hell. however, I love them. There is that glow of hope in the distance from that intense colour. I hope to get more experimental and experienced working with these palettes to add light and shade to them and develop new shapes that add to mood.

Robert Heeley has also created some mood paintings. These are much more simplistic than the others though.

I think what I have created here is very simplistic. I’m not sure that I give it much/enough credit. Is it too commercial and not experimental enough? I certainly enjoyed doing it and would like to work on more of these from the palettes I created using appropriate shapes and marks that the colours inspire.