Interface Acrylic Abstract, Day 9 30 paintings in 30 days

INTERFACE

30x30cm (12"x12") acrylic on panel

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Day 9 of Jan 2017 30 paintings challenge

Click Here to see Day 8's painting

Today I decided to exploit the properties of the fluid acrylics. I laid in a wash of yellow red and blue. I spritzed it and tilted the canvas making sure the colours ran into each other but trying to keep some of the yellow bright.

When the painting had died I looked at how the paint had dried and went with the flow of the dried paint but first I had to decide how to create a focal area. I placed a line about a third of the way down (using the divide the canvas into thirds and put the focal area there).

I strengthened some of the colour and toned down other parts going back and forth all the time. I used red in the focal area as I needed a strong colour against the mainly primary colour scheme. My next step was to scumble colour over the variation sections mainly using white added into the main colour so it would tone down and unify the design.

Scumbling is a technique I used to use a lot for flower backgrounds when I painted my florals in acrylics. It's a technique that's immensely satisfying and can be done with gusto. It can result in some lovely gradations of colours and gives a feeling of depth. The fluid acrylics do not perform so well with this technique but the results were not bad.

I am quite satisfied with this painting but I will redo the red and blues in the focal area in oil paint ladled on with a palette knife to give some extra depth and texture.

Work in Progress photos

 

Untitled Work in Progress, Geometric Abstract Day 8 of the 30 paintings in 30 days challenge

Untitled, Work in Progress

Geometric Abstract

Acrylic

30x30cm (12"x12") Acrylic on panel

Work in Progress

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Day 7 of Jan 2017 30 paintings challenge

Click Here to see Day 7's painting 

This is the companion piece to yesterday's painting on gessoed mountboard. Unfinished and to be worked on later.

Acrylics was my sole medium for a few years but I haven't worked with them for about 8 years. This, of course, means that all my acrylics are dried up (you may well ask "Why do I still have them?")

For the collage abstracts, I purchased Carol Nelson's recommended acrylics, Golden Fluid Acrylics and they work perfectly for all the techniques she uses. They are highly pigmented, fluid as the name suggests and quite transparent. They also dry incredibly quickly even for acrylics. My preferred brand used to be Winsor and Newton Acrylics. They have a good body to them, good colour and average drying time. Being used to those, I thought that my new acrylics could do the same job. Big mistake!

I started by covering the support with a wash of acrylic.

I drew in my design with charcoal, wiping most of it off with a tissue so it wasn't too black, but even so the transparency of the acrylics does not cover the marks or even pick them up into the acrylic. This resulted in some mud and unwanted marks showing through. There is no body to the acrylic at all, so completely the wrong choice for this painting.

I am enjoying my foray back into acrylics, so maybe I shall purchase some less transparent ones, or perhaps just repaint this in oils. Oils work fine over acrylic so it will be a good ground to work over. - OK I'm an art materials addict. I don't shop for shoes, many clothes, make-up etc, but suggest a new technique or type of paint and I am off like a flash...

NOTE:  I asked my husband if he could think of a name. He suggested 'The Student'. When I looked at him puzzled, he said it looked like some one sitting at a desk with a big eye watching them! Anyone got any ideas for a name if I take this one forward?

Intersection Abstract Painting WIP Day 7, 30 paintings in 30 days

INTERSECTION Abstract Paining

30x30cm (12"x12") Oil Pastel on panel

Work in Progress

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Day 7 of Jan 2017 30 paintings challenge

Click Here to see Day 6's painting

I started two geometric abstract paintings today and finished neither of them.

I had the urge to use oil pastels, a medium  I haven't used for a while. I went through a spell of using them after I finished using soft pastels (my favourite medium) because the dust affected my lungs. I mainly painted flowers in those days and you can achieve lovely gradations by blending. At the time I was very hesitant to use oil paint in the belief that they were 'difficult' to use.

I had two supports ready one of MDF panel and the other of a gessoed mount board. I had coated the panel with magenta as a base and the mountboard with a graded wash of acrylic. I tested the mountboard surface with the oil pastel but decided it was too rough for the oil pastel. In hindsight this was wrong. A certain amount of 'tooth' is required, the panel is proving too smooth.

Oil pastel never dries and the surface can remain fragile to knocks and scratches unless framed behind glass, but I had heard that using liquin allows it to dry so that it what I have tries. I will let you know if it worked.

Because of my dithering and indecision about the supports I wasn't able to finish either painting.

Some work in progress images

 The first layer of oil pastel using quite a lot of liquin

The second layer of oil pastel using slightly less liquin. The painting was getting very warm at this stage, so I added the extra blue strip and made the existing blue lighter. Now I need to incorporate that extra blue so it fits better into the painting.

Nod to Monet, Day 6 30 paintings in 30 days

Nod to Monet

Palette knife painting

Oil, 55x46cm on stretched canvas

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Day 6 of Jan 2017 30 paintings challenge

Click Here to see Day 5's painting

Another painting that started out a few years ago. I used to participate a lot in several monthly challenges on wetcanvas.com, it is a great website with forums for everything and everyone is so helpful to beginners and it is where I learnt so much about art. 

A forum I used to participate in most of the time was the Floral and Botanical forum. One of their monthly challenges was to paint waterliles. I chose to paint water lilies á la Monet. Not too bad for my stage of painting at the time, but nothing spectacular. Having changed computers a few times since then, the original photo is lost in time. Over the last year, I have resurrected this painting and tried to bring it to life. Although the results were not bad, they were not good. Determined to not let a good canvas go to waste, I attacked it again and turned it into an abstract.

This was how it was left at my last attempt 

Today I scraped off the major bits of texture and looked at it again. Remembering the lessons from Nicholas Wilton about 'scale', once again the painting seemed to be very similar on both sides and most of the colour blocks were the same size. I increased the size of some of the colour blocks and highlighted an eye path through the painting to a focal point of the brightest pink. I think that area still needs some work, but it works much better. As you see, me and my painting have a lot of history. Give me your input and let me know what else this painting needs.

Tango, Day 5 30 paintings in 30 days

Tango Abstract Painting

55x46cm

Acrylic on board

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Day 5 of Jan 2017 30 paintings challenge

Click Here to see Day 4's painting

I've taken a departure from my collages today. With this challenge I want to try a few different abstract techniques to see which resonates with me. One of the techniques I want to try is geometric abstract.

I actually started this many years ago not long after I first started painting, here is what it used to look like.

As I went looking for an old canvas I could reuse, I found this at the bottom of the wardrobe. I quite liked the idea I had at the time but then came to a stop because I wasn't sure about how to finish it, and I had forgotten all about it.

I needed to reduce the amount of black and also make it less symmetrical (golden rule of paintings, if you put a line down the middle, both sides should be different). Dancing came to mind with this painting so to enhance that theme I added more pattern to the left hand side. For more variation (remember 'Scale' in Day 1's painting?) I made the shapes larger on the left hand side. I aso made the right hand side darker as the colour variation was also the same through out (another rule - variation). The black background has some texture created when I gessoed the board and I added some red and blue so the black was less flat. This doesn't show in the photo but does add depth.

I could have spent days getting obsessed with the shapes and line sizes and making sure non of the paint bled into each other, but I it became a game of diminishing returns. I may return to it later to scumble some colour on the larger shape to add variety and make the blocks less flat.

I like the painting much better now and feel it has lots of energy. What are your thoughts?

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Fire and Earth, Collage No. 3, Day 4 of the 30 paintings in 30 days challenge.

Fire and Earth

Collage Painting

30x30cm on board

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Day 4 of Jan 2017 30 paintings challenge

Click Here to see Day 3's painting 

 I was at a bit of a loss what to do today, I was determined to somehow include some leaves I had made. As you can see, that didn't happen.

I've spent a lot of time creating plaster stones and mediallions, painting foil, air dried clay leaves and painting corrugated cardoard. I've painted everything in colour families and hoped that I could then 'just' assemble them when I had an idea. Well... I've discovered that I can't work like that! I knew this of course, but I had the mistaken belief that I could organise myself.  

I wanted to use some foil I had painted a gold and orange as the focal point (on the left of the painting). Once I started laying that out, my original idea sort of disappeared and I ended up with a completely different painting inventing the composition as I went along. Of course, this meant I had to create more elements that fitted into my new theme, with drying time inbetween each stage. However, I kept 'waiting boredom' out of the way by working on tomorrow's painting. My leaves can wait until another day.

I had to rush to take a photo before the light went today, so some of the medium is still wet (the milky looking spots). Also the top area is painted in a dark gold colour with just doesn't come through in the photo. 

Blue Medley Collage Art, Day 3, 30 paintings in 30 days

 Blue Medley

Abstract Art

21x30cm (A4 size)

Acrylic, cardboard, wire, gold leaf

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Day 3 of Jan 2017 30 paintings challenge

Click Here to see Day 2's painting

Another assemblage painting for Day 3.

I struggled with this one. I had an idea about a teal and green colour scheme so once again I started out with an acrylic skin (do you get the feeling I like making these?) and a blue and green paper sandwich. Unfortunately the colour on the paper seemed to dull after I stuck it onto the surface. The rest is pure improvisation with some thin cotton twine intertwining (pun intended) aaaaround the different elements. I found it difficult to bring all this together into a more coherent art piece and kept adding more elements probably overdoing it.

Lesson learnt: start intuitively and stop and plan some before continuing.