I don’t mean cooking and painting at the same time or watching cooking programmes when painting (too confusing – I’d end up squeezing tomato paste on to the canvas), I mean experimenting like the TV chefs’ Gino D’Acampo, James Martin or Lesley Waters – when Ainsley Harriot presented the chefs with a bag and they had to pick out items without seeing what the ingredients were.  

Seeing the new Ready, Steady, Cook with Rylan Clark-Neal, reminded me that when I used to go to night class (when you were actually able to physically go and be with people??) I had a bag with all my paints in.  They were the basic colours with some odd ones that were ‘cheap’ and because I was a student, I would buy them as they ‘would always come in handy’. Ha! That was a joke as they were never part of my usual pallet.  I would lug them back and forth to class and return them home untouched.  One night I thought, for a laugh, I wonder what would happen if I did the same?  In class I took my bag of unusual colours and asked a fellow night-classmate to put their hand in my bag and pick up two or three colours.  My challenge was to paint using those colours.  Well, that was a challenge as inevitably these unusually named colours would be picked and I would need to use them.  It was surprisingly an enjoyable and challenging experience.   

Some paintings worked and others less so, but the important thing was that I learned about colours.  I also had fun doing it.  Why don’t you try it too?

Here is one I did when Quinacridone (magenta/pink) was picked.  I never really used pink in my paintings before, but as you can see, this painting ended up with a lot of it!  Surprisingly for me, it actually is a gorgeous colour and very translucent.  I have since bought more of it and even in bigger tubes.