Fiery abstract DIY art inspired by a city sunset

This piece was inspired heavily from Fiona’s Creative Canvas YouTube channel - she shares her full processes and creates amazing pieces through some trial and error. I’m a beginner in art, so I’m currently leaning on other artists ideas and techniques to develop my style and get a feel for what I like.

The colour palette was inspired by Benoit Havard’s ‘Looking Down Regent Street’ (scroll to the end for more details).

I covered the canvas in a base layer of paint first, using a brush with water to blend the colours. This helped create a rough guide for the composition, but it came out a bit too pastel..

…so I added some vibrancy with another layer using a brush.

I then added different non-diluted paints onto the canvas with a palette knife using the base layer colours as a guide. To do this I added paint to a palette knife and gently dragged it across the canvas.

Using a palette knife to lay paint onto the canvas created a beautiful texture in itself. It allowed the colours to blend into each other and work with each other and gave me the freedom to adapt the painting as it evolved.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Choosing the colour palette

If you’ve ever struggled with this part, have a look around at paintings you like for the colour composition, take a photo of them and upload them to a colour picker tool online.

One weekend in Cirencester I visited an art gallery which was hosting some Benoit Havard pieces, and I absolutely fell in love with one of them. Interestingly, Havard also uses palette knives to create his work. I found an image of the piece online, took a screenshot and uploaded it to https://coolors.co/

This website allows you to pick and choose your palette based on an existing image.

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed creating this piece, the palette knife technique was a lot of fun, easy and allowed for lots of flexibility. I’ll be trying this technique again for sure! Thanks Fiona :)