The demise and rebirth of a painting

A week ago I was fairly happy with most of my painting Moonrise Over Sunset but there were a lot of distracting details and no real focal point.  Last Wednesday I determined to simplify it beginning with a partial glaze of near white to get back some lighter areas.  I mixed just a bit of titanium white with a Golden product that is new to me – Acrylic Glazing Medium.  That’s where things began to go wrong.  I misjudged the amount of white in the mix. My plan was to put down a thin layer of this mix and lift off the most important areas before it dried.  BUT, because of the opacity I couldn’t see anything. 

Plan B:  I decided to let it go…  I left the rest of it to dry before taking alcohol and a rough cotton rag to it.  Here’s how it looked then.  The transparent colors were GONE, the circular theme and freshness was GONE…  Grr!

Needless to say, my mood wasn’t conducive to tackling this problem so I put it aside until Saturday.  I used a viewfinder design from last year and drew it on with chalk.  The texture from the previous painting gave this one some really cool texture.  Here’s how it looks right now.  I refuse to name it until I’ve lived with it a little while but I’m liking the patterns and texture of this new painting so far. 

Lessons learned?   don’t be hasty, test products before using, let it go, recreate it. 

Enjoy!

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Coming along but still abstract – sheaves

I’m breaking in new progressive eyeglasses and it’s been a struggle to paint this week.  However, here’s the current state of the abstract I posted  Wednesday.  This painting is the first chance I’ve had to use my recently carved sheaf stamp – a personal symbol from my Saskatchewan farm childhood.  Since Wednesday, I’ve defined some dark areas as well as adding more implied texture and interest in the light areas.  I’m moving forward but “thingness” is alluding me so far.  I don’t mind it ending as an abstract but it’s unusual that I don’t see any”thing” in a painting.  It’s good practice for me though and that is the point of it right now.  Enjoy!

SIDEBAR:  Speaking of sheaves….here’s a funny story from my childhood.  As a young child who regularly attended church, my favourite hymn was [I thought] Bringing in the Cheese.  I loved my cheese so I belted that line out every chance I got.  So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that I should be singing SHEAVES instead of cheese!  I was shocked, particularly because I was too young to know what “sheaves” meant.  I learned that evening.  I chuckle every time it crosses my mind.

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Still starting…

When I’m working “from chaos” like this there are lots of layers.  I’m really having a good time puttering on 4 paintings at the same time - while I wait for one layer to dry I can pick up another painting and get another layer done on it. 

I’m having fun with my new continuous sheaf stamp which I carved last week.  You can see it in this painting in several places.  Now I’m off to my studio.  Ciao!

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Playing around

These are two canvases I started earlier this week with a variety of texture stamps, stencils and mediums.  In these pics I’ve just got the first layer of paint on them.  I’ll be working on these over the next few days taking them from chaos into, hopefully, something nice to look at.  It’s a lot of fun to just doodle with paint and not worry about where it’s going for a while.  Very therapeutic – I highly recommend it ;o) 

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Moonrise Over Sunset (20”x15” acrylic on Crescent watercolor board)

This was a lot of fun!  I have many layers of acrylic paint here.  When I began to have a vision of sunsets and moonrises I didn’t want to have just little 3” circles…  so, I lifted in several key places to suggest the larger orb.  To do that I rubbed a cotton rag wet with alcohol.  The lifting works well on this piece because of the very first layer – Golden gloss gel.   After lifting back to to white, I glazed yellow and crimson over my moon and defined darker areas behind it.  Lastly, I applied a little bit of cloudy veil [white mixed with a bit of crimson and thalo blue] over the darkest part of the sun.

Here’s what this painting looked like yesterday afternoon.  Looking at this picture you can see how much lifting I had to do to lighten my sun.

Enjoy!

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Abstract Acrylic Start

This is one of those paintings that is worked abstractly from chaos at first.  I’ve got more work to do before I can consider subject options.  I need to develop the big shapes and deal with some awkward tangents and shape placements.  I’ll quiet down some areas by glazing them down a value and that will help clarify the focal area.  So, that’s the plan… for now.  Enjoy!

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Back again… with a barn

I returned 2 days ago from a week in Mexico enjoying their beautiful beaches and catching up on my vitamin D.  I’m getting back into my routine this week. 

I’ve been working my way through exercises on the DJ Pettitt photoshop class I’m taking.  This afternoon I worked through an exercise that involved around 12 layers…  I learned lots and I like the result.  It certainly would have been faster to use the images provided with the class but using my own makes me dig so much deeper.  I really like the textures that evolved with all these layers.

I have several acrylic paintings that I’ve been working on this week.  I’ll be sharing them here soon.  Enjoy!

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