Summer of Colour Week 4

This week's colours are two reds and a metalic- very sensual.  I used cad red and crimson red and gold paint (the vertical text). 

I used turquoise underneath as a cool complement to these warm colours and allowed it to show through in the shaped areas.  The painting is collage and acrylic, 10" x 10" on canvas.

I learned a lot with this painting and I felt I had a break-through in my quest to be more painterly and less precise.

New Canvas Works

I am continuing to work on the ideas from my mindfulness sketchbook pages.  I am still working on the boundaries in the landscape subject and the sketchbook pages are an extension of that. 

I am specifically looking at the shapes that fields form, I love how no matter how hard the farmer tries, they are never square due to things like hillocks, burns, buildings, pylons, rocks, uneven ground.  The shapes of the fields are endlessly fascinating to me.

So drawing those shapes and expanding on them became a great exercise in meditation and the results are now creeping into my everyday work.

It is harder to go bigger, so I am doing it gradually, from 6 or 7 inch square in my previous post to one that is 10inches square and one that is 16inches square.  I am challenging myself with the square format to see how the shapes work.  I don't want them plonked in the middle, so I am experimenting with the placement of them as well.  I also want to do some long thin formats too.

More ideas than time, as usual!

The first one is more or less finished, it is 10"x10" and very precise.  I worked in a very strict, planned manner, drawing things out before transferring them to the canvas and keeping the paint as even as I could.

The second one, is still in progress, sorry for the slightly fuzzy photo, even though we have daylight until the wee hours here in Scotland, we do have cloud and that has reduced the light quality. 

Here I have worked in a much more intuitive way, applying paint, oil pastel and charcoal and letting the shapes form themselves.  I am also applying the paint in a more textured manner.  Although much harder to work this way, I do find it more satisfying and more painterly.

I still have a way to go with this, but I like how it is progressing.

Summer of Colour - Week 3

Actually finishing earlier this week, here are two pieces completed for the Summer of Colour challenge using two purples and a yellow.  The first one I use the purples with just a touch of yellow and the second one uses a wash of yellow over the entire painting, apart from the reserved shapes, with more layers of yellow in some selected areas.

I couldn't choose a favourite, so I am including both!

Here are the mixes I used:  The darker purple is ultramarine and magenta, the lighter purple is cerulean, magenta and white and the yellow is cad yellow medium with a little white.

The Bigger Picture

In yesterday's post, I showed you a painting for Summer of Colour that I made in two pinks and orange.  What I didn't show you, was the bigger picture - the image was just part of a larger whole.

Here is the larger painting in progress, you can see, I have already made changes to the parts shown yesterday.

There is much more still to be done, but I am loving the process.  It is an extension of the ideas that have been forming during my mindfulness sketchbook sessions and it is such fun to be able to get them onto a larger canvas (well, board in this case) at last.

Summer of Colour WK2

Working on board this time, out of the sketchbook for a change, here is this week's Summer of Colour painting.  The colours we were to work with are two pinks and an orange.




















I have been using pastels and acrylics and these are my chosen colours: magenta, pale pink and flourescent orange.

It is a lovely colour-scheme, apparently a big hit in previous years, I can see why.
 

Mindfulness Sketchbook Pages

Things are still very busy in these parts, but I am managing to find time to work in my sketchbooks during my mindfulness sessions, here are a couple of pages that I finished recently.

I really enjoy doing these and am looking forward to experimenting with them on a larger scale soon.

Summer of Colour - Wk 1

The colours for this week are two blues and a green.  I was afraid this was a bit unexciting for me, but by mixing my own blues and by making a nice bright green, I felt the colour addict within me was satisfied.

I mixed ultramarine blue with a little paynes grey for the darker blue, then I  mixed cerulean blue with a little white for a contrasting blue.  For the green, I used pthalo turquoise with lemon yellow.

Sketchbook - Finished

I decided to work in my sketchbook and on a small canvas (10" x 15"), the sketchbook is finished, but the canvas has more work to be done on it.

The Canvas - Work in Progress

Serendipity in Art

It is great to let go of the control-freak inside (well, sometimes).  I was prepping some paper ready for painting and just love what happened here. 

What I am trying to achieve is a sense of perspective in this painting.  You have to imagine it upside down for this, I wanted texture of cracks and creases, with finer ones in the distance (top of the painting) and I wanted harder, larger ones in the foreground (bottom of the painting), so I used tissue for the finer ones and dug out an old fax roll for the harder creases.

Pleased with that aspect of the work, I then applied some lettering through a stencil using texture paste.  Now, texture paste takes ages to dry and I am impatient, I wanted to get started asap, so I blasted it with the hairdryer.  (sidenote here, I have managed to blow out one hairdryer in six months by using it in the studio, but it was an old one).

As I moved the hairdryer over the lettering, I noticed that the fax paper was beginning to darken, even after I stopped.

I thought it looked rather interesting like this, but even so, I will be painting over it.  At least I know how to achieve this effect if I ever want to!

New Goddess Shapes

When I first started making the goddesses, I filled a few sketchbook pages with ideas.  I started with the simpler ones at first and they have been very successful, but I felt like trying out a new shape.

I had initially intended to make them flat, almost two dimensional because I wanted to stamp and stencil on them, but I felt they are much better with some form.  It just makes the stamping and stenciling a wee bit harder, but it is worth the extra effort.

After much persuasion by friends, I have finally set up a Facebook Page, specifically for my art.  It was simpler to do than I expected and I hope I can keep up with it.  Oh, I even managed to put a link on the right, here.

Acrylic Mediums

What mediums do you use with your acrylics?  I have found the following to be very useful: 

Working from left to right, the large tub is Gerstaecker light modelling paste, creamy and very elastic, so doesn't crack.  It has a pleasant matt finish.  It is quite subtle, so sometimes I use the Reeves rough texture gel (at the back behind the Liquitex mediums).

Second from the right is a tin of Golden varnish, which I use at the end of a piece to finish it off and seal everything up against dust and damage. This is an acrylic resin-based varnish with UV protection, which provides a thin yet tough coating.

Sitting on top of that tin is quite an old bottle of Liquitex iridescent medium.  I only tend to use that on the goddesses for my talismans.  Mixed in with the paint, it adds a little subtle sparkle.

Third from the left, at the back, is the Reeves texture gel, which is a lovely, sandy texture.  I prefer to use Golden modeling paste, which is nice and firm and is made from marble dust.  I am out of it at the moment and must order some more in soon.

At the front of the Reeves texture gel is some Liquitex Matt medium (the one with the green label), I like the flow of this and it is good for adding to paints to thin them for washes or glazes.

It would appear odd that I also have the Daler Rowney Matt medium as well, but this is much thicker and more like a thin gel. It serves a different purpose and I tend to use it to glaze a layer, before trying out something I am unsure of, which makes it very easy to wipe off, especially when I use the Golden Open paints that I favour.

Sitting on top of that is a crackle glaze.  I had a go at this for the first time this January and I love the effect, I must use it more often!

Finally, on the far right is a bottle of Golden Open Medium, this is light and watery and perfect for watering down the Golden Opens while keeping them workable.

There are other mediums I would like to try, some with fibres in, some with little balls, some with pumice or even crystal flakes - I want to try them all over time!

Talisman Progress

I started making the talismans in February and struggled with new techniques and had quite an uphill journey figuring out how to best assemble all the elements to ensure they lasted well (I was determined not to use glue).

The hardest part for me, at the beginning, was using the polymer clay, but I feel so much more accomplished with the material now and, although I am no quicker at making them, I do feel the latest goddesses are tidier and more polished.

I also feel I have improved other technical aspects like the background is now on heavy watercolour paper and not canvas to avoid the frayed edges I got with canvas.  I am more confident with my sewing machine, in adding all the elements.  I now varnish the background before adding the goddess, which helps keep dust off and I am much better at soldering the jewellery elements as well as being more experimental with them.

SOLD

These two are the latest, recently finished - I am having so much fun with them!

Works in Progress

I have two large canvases on the go, both 24" x 36" and they take a lot longer to complete, so all I have to show for my hard work this week are some detail shots.

This is the top left of canvas no.1, I love the play of  pink against the green and the pink scribing pulling the two areas together.

This is bottom right of the same canvas, here I am enjoying the play of green and purple.  There is a lot of texture built up in the many layers that I have applied so far.















This is on canvas no.2 and although it seems chaotic, I love the many layers and the lost and found symbols.

This area is the top left of the painting - just a note here, I quite often flip the paintings around and what starts as the top, may not end as the top!

Both these canvases are going to have some experimental work on them, while I try out layering landscape lines and elements.  It may go horribly wrong, but I have to try!

Zooming in with the Camera

I recently posted this large (24" x 36") completed canvas as part of my boundaries series and I think I mentioned that it has texture that wasn't clearly visible in the photo, so I took the time to get up close and personal with the camera and capture some of those textures.  It helps to get raking light from the side and at certain times of the day, this is possible.

Firstly, this is a shot from the upper central area, and here you can see the raised lettering, raised paint and the surface application of hand-scribing.

Here, from the top right, you can see the detail of the raised handwritten text, layers of paint (including buried raised text) as well as loosely woven fabric (scrim) at the bottom.

A photo taken just below the last one, shows some interesting edges of the fabric and complex colour layering.  The orange shows up beautifully here!

Large Mixed Media Canvas Completed

Photographing this piece has been a challenge, the blue has a more turquoise tinge to it, but if I adjust that, the red colour goes too orangey.  Oh the fun of photographing artwork properly!

This canvas is over 2 feet wide and exactly 3 feet tall.  I used scaled up versions of some of my favourite stencils, including text for texture and I thoroughly enjoyed working larger.

One of my artistic influences is Mark English, in particular, his landscapes.  The tree stencils I use really do remind me of his work and I get a little buzz every time I use them in my own work.

I revisited his website yesterday and began to wonder if I could make my abstracts look more like landscapes and I noodled around with Photoshop, trying out some digital ideas.  This is the result of layering some other paintings in places on this larger canvas.  Now I need to experiment to figure out how to do this for real!

Juggling Projects

The Liminal Project

I think I have art ADHD, I have so many projects on the go at once - at least there is no time to get bored!

I have more talismans in the works and I started the larger 2' x 3' painting over the weekend and it is coming along great, but needs some more layers.  You can also see in the background of the above photo, there is a board (60 x 80cm, roughly 2'x3') being prepped with texture, ready for another boundaries painting.

As well as the talismans and the large boundaries piece, I sketched out my design for the embroidery piece for the Liminal Project (which is part of a larger work, Embroidered Digital Commons, a long-term collaborative project started in 2002), now I have the fun task of choosing colours.

I rather like the variety of all these projects - they are all different, yet tie in to each other in some way, so although my output may seem scattered, it is, in fact, quite focused.

Newest Talisman: The Dancer

While I get on with my larger "boundaries" piece, here is another talisman I finished recently.  I manipulated the figure before baking, so she has a dynamic twist and it looks like she is dancing with her hula hoop.

Hopefully, I will have something to show on the latest boundaries painting, I am still at the early texturising stage, currently.

Goddess of the Night Talisman

I am in the middle of a very busy week, so although some artwork is being done every day, not much is getting finished.

I have plans for a large abstract on the "boundaries" theme and am busily planning some larger stencils so they fill the space adequately and I have stapled a large canvas directly to the wall.   I am looking forward to getting messy on that project soon!

Here is a finished talisman, it feels like night in this one, so I have called her the "Goddess of the Night".

Another project, I am working on is an embroidery section for a collaborative piece based on definitions of the word "liminal".  The section I have chosen to do, sort of fits in with my "boundaries" theme and is:

"the site of the border of any stable system of signs,"

I am at the gathering materials stage and figuring out how to display the words.

Winged Talisman

This talisman has already sold and will be flying off to her new owner tomorrow.  I love the wings (as does my customer).

More talismans (sans wings) are nearing completion, will post them once the finishing touches are made.  I have worked hard on them this weekend and it has been such great fun!

New Talismans in Progress

I have some backgrounds prepared, ready to be assembled into more talismans.  They are very satisfying to make, the whole process employs so many different techniques: painting, stenciling, stamping, collage, scribing, sewing and that is before I get to the really fun part of adding the little figures and their jewels.

When I started on the background sheets last week, I took photos, intending to do a step-by-step of the process, but I got involved this week and totally forgot to take more photos.  I will do this at some time, promise!

Finally! A Talisman or Two

After weeks of work, planning, experimenting, testing and learning new things, I have finally finished some of the little 4"x4" talismans that I have been working on.

I have had to learn how to use polymer clay, I have designed my own goddesses and learn how to make moulds of them, I have had to learn how to solder the metal findings and how to attach the figures to the panels securely, without using glue at all.

So here are two, I have more in the making:

EDIT:  They are both now SOLD.