Ellsworth Kelly – a short lesson on stamping and colour
The American painter, Ellsworth Kelly was the inspiration for these grid creations. He was very well-known for his colour-grid paintings and abstract work.
Supplies:
- a selection of stamping tools
- black acrylic paint (dollar store paint works best for this)
- watercolour paper (or another heavy type of paper)
- tape for a frame around your piece
- small paintbrush & other paint colours
For today’s art-inspiration you need to begin by going on a scavenger hunt around the house. What do you think will make a good stamp? Gather up around 8-12 smaller items that will be good for stamping. I found marker lids, an earplug, a piece of lego, lids of containers, tops of an eraser, and some foam pieces. Yours will look different based on what you have at home – that’s good! Try to find as many different sizes as you can. A matchbook car will work – you can roll the wheels in the paint and roll the wheels along the page.
Here’s what I found to use, and then I tested out the stamps on a piece of copy paper to see how they look.
Now we’re ready to begin our stamping experiment. I like to tape down my work so when it’s finished there is a border around the work. I used watercolour paper for this, 11×15, but any size paper will work. The copy paper will not tape down very well, so if you don’t have watercolour, canvas paper or thicker paper like Bristol board, don’t tape down the edges. I also used oil pastel and black acrylic paint from the dollar store. If you don’t have oil pastels, crayons or markers will work just as well.
Begin by dividing up the page into different shapes, some larger and some smaller and all different types. Then, dip each stamp into the paint and fill up the area.
Fill up each section with different stamps. I even used my finger for one stamp. As an option, you can leave one section and paint it in a different colour. I used a bright lime green – but you can use any colour you want! You can also use, chalk pastels, crayons, or markers for this rather than paint. Then, I stamped over top for an interesting bit of colour contrast.
There are many different variations you can do with this project. I tried one using different colours of blue – you can mix different colours by adding white or black paint in small amounts to make different shades of blue. You can try this monochromatic scheme with any colour.
You can change it up by adding a complementary colour from the colour wheel. You will notice, the complementary colour of blue is orange, so that is why I choose to make one of my colour blocks orange. Complimentary colours go really well together. You can also try this project using analogous colours – colours that are side by side on the colour wheel.
Here’s a look at complementary colours blue and orange:
I would love to see what your stamping project looks like! Send us a picture at artinactiontoronto@gmail.com. And follow us on Facebook and Instagram so you don’t miss a post!