During the Storm, Acrylic Abstract Painting, Day 10, 30 paintings in 30 days

DURING THE STORM

30x40cm (12"x16") acrylic on panel

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Day 10 of Jan 2017 30 paintings challenge

Click Here to see Day 9's painting 

Continuing today to explore the properties of the fluid acrylics. I have deviated from my orange them

Today's painting is on reused mount board that used to be a floral still life. The surface had tissue applied to it that gave it an interesting texture. I coated it with with paint and cut the board in half giving me two 30x40cm supports.

Here is the original board before I cut it in half, you can still see the ghost of original painting

I put an initial layer of paint down, spritzing it and letting it run every which way.

I thickened some black acrylic with gel medium to give me a thick paint which I applied in a rough line across the top with a palette knife. (I don't know why I didn't think of using gel medium on yesterday's painting). This worked amazingly well, the mixture was nice and juicy to work with and the fluid acrylics have great pigment density so I only needed a drop or two in the gel medium.

 

I then enhanced the black with impasto blues and purples and some grey which is not easy to see. Below this impasto layer I again added more paint, spritzed some of it to make it flow. This was a process of to and fro until I had a good mix of soft and strong paint with the colours feeling right - that unidentifiable moment when you know it's going well.

A final flourish was the swathe of green across the black. 

This was an enjoyable process and it was one of those times when the paint and my thoughts were working together. It is certainly a concept I can take further and also scale up.