Playing with Paint

When I was originally investigating watercolors, I was taught to make swatches of color mixes. Friday, I got some more paint colors (Golden) so I decided to go ahead and do three swatch pages: yellows and blues (greens), reds and yellows (oranges), and reds and blues (purples). This was a very unscientific process where I made charts and mixed each pair approximately 50/50. I tried to vary the mixes a bit and paint multiple different mixes in each pair; some colors, like the phthalos, I had to stray from the 50/50 ratio fairly drastically to get close to the target color. This was a very interesting and useful process because now I have a permanent record that will tell me which colors to use to mix a wide variety of secondary colors. I also learned which primary colors make good secondaries and which do not (Pyrrole Red does not make good purples, but makes nice oranges, for instance). If you haven't tried this with your paints, I recommend it....it's tremendously educational and also fun.

Wishing for Mad Camera Skillz =-)

For some reason I am having the best time painting and the worst time with the camera. Yes, the new one. Sigh. Part of the problem is that they paint is glare-ey. It's all my fault, because the paints I prefer are the glittery, glitzy, glowy ones. So I'm paying a price for my magpie tendencies. To make matters worse, I had to go and glue stuff onto the abstract. I am so happy with how it turned out. I'm thinking of naming it Turmoil after the recent tornadoes that have plagued Illinois--it does have that spiral aspect (can you tell with all the glare?). Then there is the unicorn, which looks pretty surreal with the glare that is on it; in person it looks a little sloppy around the edges (because I am still in the process of developing my brush-handling skills, which are in their beginning stages). However, it looks less anemic than it did before I plumped out the belly of the unicorn. I think maybe I made the butterflies too brightly colored; do they detract from the unicorn? I have a lot to learn.....but at least I'm having a good time with it.

Cute

Here are three photos of things I consider cute: my daughter, Daphne, and my pegasus painting (well, sort of cute, I dunno....). The painting is being given to one my coworkers tomorrow as she asked for something mythological. That's never a problem for me as I like fantasy better than any other genre when it comes to art. The painting technique is fairly primitive, but not too bad for my second painting on canvas board.

Another Paisley

I wish I had photos of my new acrylic work for you. I did two paintings, the pegasus and a centaur, and both turned out fairly well considering my lack of experience; however, they are proving very difficult to photograph. I used a lot of metallic and pearlescent paint, and while that makes them very pretty (in the opinion of myself, given that I like those types of things), it makes them very glare-y to photograph. I'm thinking I may have to try again with my better camera after I figure out how it works. In the meantime, here is a little something I started at my mom's house New Year's Day and finished Friday in a hellaciously boring meeting. I think it is better technically than the monochrome one (I screwed up less), but the sharp angles and straight lines make it less visually pleasing to me.

What's up

Hi. I know I haven't posted in a while. Basically I am dealing with some health complications, combined with end-of-the-school-year craziness, combined with a new hobby....gardening. Yes, I am getting my hands dirty not only with paint, but with good old-fashioned dirt. I'm growing lilies, tomatoes, strawberries, morning glories, fuchsias, and marigolds (so far).

However, I have had time to do some artwork. I'm working on a canvas board, painting it with acrylics (like I decided to do when I was painting Julian). I'm really not very good at it, but I am approaching it as a casual experience and not letting myself get bent out of shape when I mess up (which is frequent). It is a picture of a pegasus with a butterfly on his chest. I drew the same drawing onto a shirt to paint, but made the mistake of not tracing over the drawing I did in disappearing fabric marker with permanent fabric marker, so I am going to have to start over again. That might not be a bad thing as the first sketch was really only mediocre. However, the one I did on the canvas board was really great....but I did it in pencil, and the first layers of acrylic smeared the pencil. Plus I dripped some of the sky color on the pegasus' mane and neck, and had to cover over it with white. But like I said, I'm approaching it very casually, and that is working for me, derailing my perfectionism before it can really take hold. This is a very positive development, giving me the freedom to just play and not worry about the final outcome.

I don't have photos yet, but hope to take some soon. I also plan to re-draw my pegasus on my shirt and start painting that. Plus I am contemplating another round of shoe torture.

Shoe Torture

Here are the results of my recent bouts of shoe torture (which is way too fun to be legal btw). I went to Famous Footwear and bought four or five pairs of shoes on clearance to play with after my last experiments. The top pair is done in ShivaPaintstiks (not sure how I'm going to heat set them, maybe in the dryer). I did them with stencil brushes. They are not symmetrical. I put ribbon yarn in as laces and added beads to the ends (they are merely decorative, not meant to be tied). That was a very fast, fun pair to do. I like the soft, easy airbrushed look.

The bottom pair I call Spring Bling. They were a semi-ugly floral print. First I pained them with Lumiere Emerald Green (big improvement already). Then I glued on dichroic cabochons. Next I glued on little sparkly gems (used E6000 for all gluing). Finally I glued on beads--leaf beads and round green Czech glass. Well, I used too much glue for the cabochons and didn't let them dry enough. So after the first test-wearing, I peeled off all the ones that weren't tightly bonded (six of them), peeled off all the glue, and re-applied with about 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of glue. Then I let them dry for three full days. Now they are stuck on there good and tight. Just goes to show you that more (glue) is not always better.

Finished!

I put the last touches on Julian today, and although as usual I see some imperfections, I am overall very pleased with him. Given that this is my first ever representational acrylic painting, and that it was done on fabric, I think it turned out well (if I do say so myself). I'm definitely going to try this again, both on fabric and an canvas board.

This whole experience has been a great confidence booster for me as I really have very little painting experience and was pretty sure I couldn't do it. I found that having the right brushes makes a big difference. Right doesn't have to be expensive in this case; my brushes were from Hobby Lobby, bought at half off, and did the job just fine. The crucial thing was to have a variety of sizes and shapes.

Now I'm off to go torture some more shoes!!!