Tuesday, March 23, 2010

New Inspiration aka New Transition

New Piece added today!!



SO...after working with my new mediums I had previously discussed I finally came up with something I LOVE which actually is a combination of the two! :) I honestly can't stop looking at it and am really hoping to go in this direction technically for awhile. It is so much fun!!!




Monday, March 15, 2010

Broadening My Horizons...

Now that I have been MIA for awhile from blogging I decided I really needed to give it better effort. And after looking at a wonderful blog (http://www.karascakery.com/blog/) by a girlfriend of mine Kara I decided that I was majorly slacking so I'm pledging to be more active in this because it really is fun to share and write down some of my ideas..

On that note - recently I purchased some new materials that I have never worked with. Since the only painting classes that I took were in oils - I really have been self taught in the world of acrylics. There are so many wonderful and exciting mediums and things you can add to acrylics to make texture and the painting feel 3d on the canvas which we all know is something I LOVE.

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The first one I got and have actually already done a piece with is Golden's Pumice Gel. It is a great tool in order to give a sandy, gritty, pumice (hence the name) feel. Gives alot of texture and seems porous like coral almost when used in big quantities on the canvas. I have always been fascinated by the texture that I see in other peoples work and knowing nothing about it I made my husband go exploring in my art store of something to get this fix. I think it's great! I painted my first piece with it...and feeling pretty clueless having never used it I was pretty nervous. But I think think it actually turned out well - better than I expected at least! As always I just went with the piece with nothing in mind really. I knew I wanted to do a background similiar to some of my more recent pieces that use a palette knife technique that I accomplished and love but thats about it.

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Playing around with some new colors and my new pumice gel I came up with this:







"Globe"
(named by a friend actually because thats what it reminded her of when it was in this direction - I liked it so it stuck)











Here is a close up of the painting so you can actually see the pumice part....







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My second new purchase is called "Acrylic Flow Release". This one I think is going to take a lot more practice, i.e. mess ups, before I really get the hang of it as it's alot different. I see alot of work where people achieve the look of watercolors in their pieces but by using acrylics. I personally have never been sucessful with watercolors but love acrylics so I thought this would be a good approach for me.







I started on a quadriptych using this but really feel as it is a staged process of application when using this since you have to let it run all over and dry. I let the first stage dry and then worked on the "Globe" piece. Hopefully I will be able to have time this week to finish it though - I love quadriptychs! (fyi...this is a piece of work made up of four panels or canvases) I'll post it as soon as I do!

Happy monday everyone!