Monday, November 24, 2014

Colorful Trio

Colorful Trio
Image Size  12" x 18"
Watercolor

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a one day workshop with Jeanne Hyland.  It was really fun.  If you are looking for an informative, motivating workshop, I highly recommend her as a teacher.  She taught us how to work on a super saturated piece of paper.  Of course, she made it look really easy.  This painting is my attempt to use that technique on my own.  It was a lot harder than it seemed, watching her in her workshop.  As with all watercolor, it's a matter of the control of water vs. paint.  I've always had a problem with that.  It is the reason that watercolor is so challenging.  The challenge is also the reason that watercolor is such a delight.  I would be bored if painting with watercolor was easy.

I love the look of the soft edges that is achieved with this technique.  I need to use non-staining colors so that I can do some lifting in future paintings.  In this painting, my shadows crept into the background because my paints were too wet and since they were staining colors, I wasn't able to lift the paint.  Also, because my background was the white of the paper, there was less room for error.

I do like this painting overall even with the goobers.   I am excited to try this technique again.  I can see that a lot of trial and error will be necessary before I am able to master this technique.  Below is the painting that I did in Jeanne's workshop.  It was done from one of her reference photos. 

I don't think this is a good painting but I do like the soft edges and the color range within the flower.  



Monday, November 17, 2014

At The Shore

"At The Shore"
Image Size 8" x 8"
Encaustic

Here is another encaustic with a shellac burn.  On this one I only put the shellac on the bottom portion.  This is an abstracted wave (in case you can't tell) and I thought the shellac burn would make a nice texture for the sand area.




Monday, November 10, 2014

Substratum

Substratum
Image size 8" x 8"
Encaustic

I've been experimenting with encaustics this week.  I really like this medium.  The fluidity of the melted wax is magical.  I love that this medium is not totally controllable.  That's a perfect foil for my black and white personality and controlled painting style.  I'm surprised that painting this way isn't  stressful to me but I'm really enjoying it.  Also, as much as I love to paint in a tightly rendered, representational way, sometimes I want to paint abstractly and this medium is perfect for those times. 

For this painting, I tried doing a shellac burn after I applied and fused the layers of wax.  I love the mottled look that the shellac makes.  I've been wanting to try this for a long time but fire usually freaks me out.  I was working outside (it's best to have good ventilation when working with wax) and put my panel on a piece of stone, but I still had my fire extinguisher next to me when I lit this on fire.  It's actually pretty cool lighting the shellac on fire.  It's hard to see the flame but as soon as the textures make their appearance, it's obvious that it is burning.

So far, I've been using a heat gun to fuse the wax layers.  That is a very acceptable way to work with the wax but I think I would have much more control with fusing small areas if I were to use a torch.  I'm so scared of fire that I haven't wanted to try using one in the past, but now, maybe I'm ready to move ahead and try one. 

I'm such a scaredy cat baby but by having my fire extinguisher at the ready, working outside and having my panel on fire resistant material, using the torch should be pretty safe.  My 83 year old friend has been using a torch for her encaustics for years so if she can do it, so can I, right?

Monday, November 3, 2014

Sun Shade

Sun Shade
Image size 22" x 15"
Watercolor

Last week's painting was painted on a paper parasol from my niece's wedding.  This week's painting is of another niece at that same wedding using one of the parasols.  I guess it would have made more sense chronologically to post this one with the unpainted parasol and then the painted parasol but I didn't think about that until right now.

I haven't painted a portrait for almost two decades and even back then, I think I only painted three or four and they weren't very good. Painting a portrait is very stressful for me and I'm not really very happy with this one.  First, it looks nothing like my niece (she's so much prettier) and it's also very tight.  I was able to start to relax as I painted it by telling myself "it's only a piece of paper" over and over and in the end, I was enjoying the process.  I am looking forward to trying another portrait soon.

Related Posts with Thumbnails