I went into the Works (cheap arts & crafts supplier) recently and noticed they had a huge canvas for only £12. It's, of course, very poor quality, but fine for some experimental art making. And since I had so much fun making my "potato painting" hessian sack - and still had half a sweet potato left to use - it seemed like a serendipitous opportunity to develop my "potato painting" skills...
As I learnt from my first attempt, the easiest shape to paint with was a wedge - so I cut the remaining potato into wedge-shaped pieces.
The flood light in my attic is currently broken and I have yet to fix the problem, so in the evenings I am currently working in an atmospheric set up with candles and my (extremely kitsch) battery powered neon lights, as well as my phone light for illumination.
It was actually a mistake to put the paint into a pallet as it's much easier to scrap the paint from a flat surface with the potato wedges - I will remember for next time. Acrylic paint seemed like the safest option as it gets very messy and oils are a nightmare to clean.
I started off by adding a streaked base layer, by scraping the side of the paint-laden potato wedge across the canvas - before doing some more improvised mark making with the sharper edge and blening the colours together.
It ended up looking dynamic but quite messy - and the darker colours had become overly dominant. There were sections which I liked but I decided it needed some purer colour marks - so, I let it dry before adding another layer of marks
I tried to stop the colours blending too much when applying the second layer of marks, and predominantly used brighter colours; yellow, red, orange, white and purple to contrast with the dominant dark blue/green of the background. I love the mottled effect some of the potato marks created - which differentiates it from using a standard paint brush.
I think there's definitely room for improvement, as I learn how to better use the "potato" as my mark-making tool - but overall, I'm happy with how this first attempt turned out!
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