How to Paint

Difficulty: 2/5
Colours: Titanium white, phthalo blue, mars black, bright red & lemon yellow (just a bit!)
Brushes: Large brush (for background), flat brush, detail round brush

This piece isn’t as technically demanding as some of the other paintings we’ve explored, but I learnt a lot about layering to create depth trying to recreate it. There isn’t much online about how Blackman paints or what techniques he employs, so it was a bit of a playful experiment on my part. I really enjoyed the graphic, cartoony quality of his style.

I’ve never painted flowers either, so that was another fun lesson. A small to medium flat brush will create flower ‘petals’ quite nicely, and varying brush pressure creates a kind of feathery, wispy look – which works out quite well when trying to build a big bouquet of flowers. The touches of red, peach and yellows lift the painting, and make it a bit more interesting to look at.