Looking at rust

The intentions of this piece were too recreate some rust within my book. Now this is a lot harder than I had previous thought it would be to create. I wanted to look at the close up picture of rust that  had taken, I liked the way in which there was a flare of all different colours within it. It ranged from a bright orange colour going back into a deep red. To start with I needed to think how I could create the texture of rust, it has a gritty texture to it, sort of like gravelly. So I decided to mix the colours Golden Barok Red and Transp Oxide-Red lake, this that this would create the darker colours you can see throughout the picture of the rust, however it just created a purpley mix. I carried on by mixing together a small amount of gravel that I had found. Now, since I think that rust has the bumpiness of gravel I thought that it would create the exact same texture with a more defined look. I was happy with how the gravel changed the paint, it made it thicker. Next I spread the paint in three different marks across the page, I didn't want to do the whole page as the picture of the rust, since I was just experimenting so I wanted to do quick marks across the page, and that I did. I wasn't happy with the colour of the paint. It definitely looked nothing like the rust I was painting or just rust in general, it looked silly. Therefore instead of starting again, I got a sponge, wet it and dragged it across the page. I like the effect this create on my page, it had create natural marks of expression, never to be made again. However I still had the horrible purple on my page, even when I look at it now, I dislike it a lot. So, what could I do? Well I had the option of just starting again, a fresh start on my painting, but I didn't want to do that. I had created these marks on my page that I really didn't want to ruin, therefore I decided to add white paint. I knew this would cover and blend the horrible un-rusty colour. I only wanted to add white to particular parts of my page, not to cover all of it. I still wanted to add gravel to the white paint, even though you can't see white paint on a white page, the gravel would show up giving the exact texture that I desired. After adding the white paint, I was reasonably pleased. 

The white ended up turning grey with the dust that the gravel added to it, the purple was covered up but my expressive marks weren't. So, to conclude I am happy with how this piece turned out, although it doesn't look exactly like the picture of the rust that I took it's still helped me to represent the texture and look of rust in my own way.