Skyscape II

"Skyscape II

Image size 9" x 6"

Encaustic

I've had another busy week will little time to paint so I went back to experimenting with my encaustics.  I love painting skies with this medium.  I tried to do a simple grassy field but in this picture, it looks pretty sad.  In person, I thought it was successful, but I might have to revisit that area with my heat gun and some more colors.

Stormy Sunset

"Stormy Sunset"

Image size 6" x 6"

Oil

I used my palette knife again this week.  It is so much more fun than using a brush.  I don't really enjoy using a brush with oils because I don't like the drag of the paint.  I'm used to the fluidity of watercolor and the heavy oils really bug me except when I use a palette knife.  Then it's like spreading frosting - such fun.  

Now I wish I had a cupcake to eat.😕

I painted the support red before I painted this and let specks of the red peek through.  

Lone Waterlily

"Lone Waterlily"

Image Size 10" x 14"

Watercolor

I love painting waterlilies and liked the interesting shape of the shadow in my reference photo.  There are a few areas I might tweak on this but for now I'm taping it up where I will see it each time I walk into my studio.  That way, I can look at it with fresh eyes each time I see it and will decide if I want to change anything.  

Green Onions

"Green Onions"

Image size 6" x 6"

Oil

I can't believe that it's been a year and a half since I've painted in oil and two years since I've done a palette knife painting.  Even though oil isn't my favorite medium, I do like painting with a palette knife so it surprises me that I've let so much time pass without using that tool.  

I went to the Farmer's Market this weekend hoping to find some incredible vegetables to paint but there was nothing that screamed "PAINT ME" so I ended up with these little onions.  I chose a red background to add some punch.  I do love red but rarely use it.  I wonder what's up with that?  I'll have to concentrate when I make my color choices for future paintings instead of always going with my comfortable colors.

New Heights

"New Heights"

Image size 15" x 8"

Watercolor and Acrylic

This is painted on a piece of 140# hot press Arches paper.  As soon as I began wetting the paper, I could see that it had problems with the sizing.  That seems to be an ongoing problem with the paper that I have.  I have purchased some new Arches paper for projects that involved a lot of drawing where I don't want any surprises with how the paper will react, but I've come to expect most of the paper that I have stored will have problems with the sizing so I'm keeping a lot of matte medium on hand so I can seal the paper when I have this problem.

I'm sure that I've had this paper for at least 10 years because I don't typically buy hot press paper.  I find it hard to work on since I like to paint with many glazing layers.  The previous layers tend to lift on hot press, which is really frustrating.

Of course, when I seal the paper with matte medium, the paint layers lift even easier.  In this painting, I painted the background and initial base colors of the pear with watercolor.  Since I wasn't doing additional layers on the sky, the watercolor was fine.  For the pear, the watercolor was lifting way too much so I carefully painted a layer of matte medium over the watercolor and painted the rest of the layers in acrylic.  There's always a way to make things work, which is a fun challenge.