This is the story of my acrylic painting named “Halloween-esque“. As its name suggests, it is a painting of a castle in a haunted theme. I call this a story because it took me a long time to complete similar to writing a story book or making a movie which also has excitement, action and emotions involved. It was also a new experience of working on a big canvas, brought forth difficulties involved and helped me to know my abilities and weaknesses better.
It started on September 5, 2012 when one of my friends asked me to paint a Castle with Acrylic colors of a little mysterious kind, for her. At that time I didn’t know a lot of things – like how to draw this thing as I hadn’t ever tried to paint any building type stuff. It was all seeming as if art was all unknown to me. There were a few other issues like choosing the size of canvas, how many color tubes would I need and of which colors and above all I didn’t know how to draw on a big canvas!
Then one of my Uncles guided me and informed me about a website called www.himalayafineart.com for buying canvas and acrylic colors and my brother and sister gave suggestions related to the theme. After all the online shopping for paints and canvas, on October 17, 2012 I got everything set, my colors, brushes and yes a big canvas. Then in-front of me there came another problem – where should I set up my canvas and painting accessories? After a study of some places in my house, I decided to paint in the balcony of my house, as it is filled with beautiful daylight and cool breeze which I felt as the perfect location for painting. As the canvas was big I faced another problem – where to place the canvas – an Easel or just on the ground. After many experiments I decided to use the tea-table and two cardboard boxes as an Easel.
While painting the moon
When all setup was done I started to draw a rough layout of the painting by drawing and erasing many times using different tools like colorful chalks, pencil, ruler, and also some kitchen items like steel plates and pots. Just drawing a rough sketch of the painting, it took me more than a week. It was quite experimental and challenging for me. After taking a little break, it was the coloring time or you can say it was the time for giving it a look of an actual picture. Extra care needs to be taken while painting in acrylic colors as the mixed colors need to be used within a short period of mixing before they dry up. I did the coloring in parts. Finally my big painting or you can say big project was completed on November 17, 2012. It was quite a happy and relaxing day when I showed it to my family and got really good comments from them. And finally on February 08, 2013, I gave the painting to my friend and found a big smile on her face. My story had a great happy ending :)
The painting at it appears on my friends’ wall
Halloween-esque on Wall
