Monday, March 28, 2016

Turbulence

"Turbulence"
Image size 15.5" x 15.5"
Encaustic
I really enjoyed working on this painting.  The colors I started with completely changed as I continued to layer wax and it evolved into a totally different painting.  As much as I loved the colors as I was finishing the painting, I felt that it was lacking some pizazz so I added areas of shellac burning into the lower portion and am really happy with the result.



Monday, March 21, 2016

Kelp Forest

"Kelp Forest"
Image size 6" x 6"
Encaustic

I've been concentrating on my watercolor paintings for the last couple of months and have missed working with wax so I decided to paint an encaustic this week.  Watery subjects are such fun to paint and, of course, watercolors are a great medium to use to achieve that fluid look, but I've found that I can also get an interesting watery effect using encaustics.   

Painting the wax onto the surface is only half of the work when using this molten medium.  Using the heat gun or blow torch is equally important to the appearance of the finished painting.  Manipulating the wax once it is applied to the surface is what gives the finished look.  I like to get a lot of movement with the heat gun.  Some colors are transparent and some are opaque and the colors react differently to the heat which adds interest to the painting.

Monday, March 14, 2016

Time To Plant

"Time To Plant"
Image Size 15" x 11"
Watercolor

This neglected onion started sprouting to get my attention and I waited until the greenery looked interesting and decided to paint it.  I think onions are beautiful when they sprout and the onion begins to wither as the greenery grows stronger.  

I've heard that you can plant an onion in this stage and it will grow a new onion but that doesn't make sense to me so I'm not going to bother.  If any of you have done this successfully, let me know.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Watercolor Collage

Watercolor Collage
Image size 7" x 7"
watercolor and collage
Just a little playing around this week with some of my rice paper and watercolor.  I really love the textures that these different papers give when applied over and under watercolors.  This is a study for a larger abstract using these papers.  I don't plan to try to recreate this design - I was using this as an experiment to get ideas started.

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