Quick Lesson in Fast Painting

Painting something quickly doesn't always offer the greatest results, but with practise it can help get a looser style. This donut is a tasty example.

I used just 4 colours of acrylic on this A5 painting (yellow ochre, crimson red, raw umber and turquoise plus white) and the painting took less than 30 minutes (most of it waiting for the base blue to dry).

With the base layer dry I made sketch in about two minutes. I decided to use a 1.5 inch flat which was going to make big marks fast. A little raw umber on the base, then a flat glide around the bun and I was a good way there. When working with a big brush every stroke coun ts, and some need to be repeated a few times to get it right.

The pink was added quite thinly to let the background come through, giving it a little more depth that just bright pink. A few stronger pink marks to define shadows and raw umber in the centre hole and all that was left was to apply various shades of red and pink in the very corner of the brush (still the 1.5 inch one) to give an idea of sprinkles.

Quick painting may not give you a truly realisitic representation of an object or scene, but often it will give you a much more interesting one. Why not try limiting yourself yourself to a large brush and see how much fun it can be?