Today I started to block in the colours in the underpainting. As you can see it looks really rough, but it will all be covered in paper eventually. The paint acts as a guide for me and also to test colours and values.
Haven't been painting much, but I started work on another mixed media piece the other day. While I was waiting for part of it to dry, I started playing with a piece of paper that I had brushed gesso on a while ago. Part of it looked good so I doodled these trees on the parts I liked and made a dyptych of it. Both are about 4" x 10" acrylic on paper. Just a little fun, nothing serious!
I have a short workday on Wednesdays, so last Wednesday afternoon I got the sudden urge to work on another Milkweed painting! I tried to take into considerations suggestions that I received here on my blog and on some art forums I belong to. This one is quite a bit darker, and I tried to incorporate a lot of texture. I wasn't as successful with the Epsom salts this time, and had to get out the handy-dandy Proxa -brush to lightly scrub back to white for some of the seed fluff. I finished this up yesterday morning. I happy with a lot of this: My experiment with granulating medium and India ink worked fairly well and gave a lot of interesting texture particularly in the bottom part. I also gave the whole painting a light spattering of iridescent gold acrylic paint which is easier to see in real life. I think I could have done a bit better at composition, that's something that seems to get away from me sometimes! Here is a closeup of some of the texture: I think I've got a few...
In my last post I mentioned how you can use things around the house or purchased at the dollar store to create texture in watercolour or acrylics. Here are a few examples of some of the "tools" I use to create texture for my collage papers and for interesting backgrounds. Here I have some cheesecloth, Halloween spider webbing, and a styrofoam tray that holds test tubes. (I get these from work, we throw them out everyday so if you want some let me know. You'd just have to pay for the shipping!) The ever popular bubble wrap (also fun to pop while waiting for paint to dry!), the one with the squares is a mat for the sink, and I can't remember what the other thing is! The white one is for under rugs to keep them from slipping and the green one was for under placemats. The yellow stuff was in the craft section. Not sure what it's called. This texture was created by first underpainting in fluid acrylic, then applying another wash and placing the green mat ...
It's looking great! I can't wait to see the final result.
ReplyDeleteStay inspired!
Michelle
Brain Angles - Invisible Ink
Patty, it's looking very good already.
ReplyDeleteThanks Michelle and Kathryn! I can't wait to get working on the collage part.
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