Watery World - on TerraSkin

This painting wins the prize for the most fun to paint.  I've always loved to paint Koi - which you know if you've been following my blog for any length of time - but painting them on Terra Skin is wonderful!  The surface, along with using acrylics like watercolors, allowed me to get the feeling of water and know that I could layer without disturbing my previous painting.  I am going to continue fiddling with this a bit more but I wanted to post it for this week's painting.  It took SO long to paint.  It's large, 25" x 35", and a lot of the time was spent waiting for layers to dry.  This was painted with  a combination of pouring and direct painting.  So far, this probably has about 20 thin layers of paint, which gives it a wonderful translucent quality.  I took WIP pictures which I will make into a slide show later this week (if the pictures turned out) so you can see my process.

Watery World - on TerraSkin
Image size 25" x 35"
Acrylic

Water Lilies on TerraSkin

I'm working on TerraSkin again.  I just can't seem to put away my acrylics and TerraSkin.  It's my new addiction.  This painting was a bit harder than the paintings I've done on this surface in past weeks, entirely because of my own stupidity.

I've been using a combination of pouring paint and direct painting with the acrylics.  I do several pours initially and then put resist on my design to protect areas from future pours.  Then I add more layers of paint to the background until I get the effect I want.  I am working really wet and because the TerraSkin is not porous, the water and paint sit on the surface and it can take awhile for each layer to dry.  Being the impatient person that I am, I put the painting out in the sun to speed up the drying process because I was excited to add another layer of paint.  I know (from reading and from experience) that paintings with resist should not be put in the sun or exposed to heat (from a hair dryer) because the resist can get gummy.  It's been really hot here this past week so the painting in the sun was probably dry in about 5 minutes and if I had taken it out of the sun in such a short period of time, it might have been okay but I got busy doing something else and forgot about it for about an hour.  The good news is that the paint was dry.  The bad news is that the resist was very gummy and not easy to remove on about half of the areas.

At this point, most reasonable people would have thrown the piece away and started over but I'm stubborn and was determined to save the painting.  I did, but it probably added a couple of hours to the process.  I think it was probably harder to remove from this surface than from paper because the goo just kept sliding around on the surface.  I finally used dry flour on the surface to make the resist more crumbly which worked better than anything else and then removed the final film with alcohol, which didn't work really well.  Maybe I should have tried fingernail polish remover but that may have harmed the surface.  So...don't put a painting with resist in the sun or leave the resist on the surface too long.  I've done that twice so hopefully I have learned from my mistakes now.

Waterlilies on TerraSkin
Image Size 16" x 20"
Acrylic

Wisteria on TerraSkin

Painting on TerraSkin is quickly becoming an addiction for me.  I really love the effects I get when using liquid acrylics on it.  Also, I probably have more acrylic paint than I could use in one lifetime so I might as well use it.  Using watercolor on the TerraSkin is fun too but I really like being able to paint so many layers with the acrylic and know that all of the previous layers are permanent.  Of course, then I am giving up the lifting qualities that are so wonderful with this surface.

Wisteria on TerraSkin
Image Size 18" x 24"
Acrylic

Snowy Iris

Painting this was a bit out of my comfort zone with it being so non-literal but I did have fun with it.  I'm beginning to really like painting with oils.  The thick paint is less of a problem for me than it used to be.  I think I'm just getting used to it although I still prefer the fluidity of watercolors and silk dyes.

Painting more loosely is easier for me with oils than with watercolors.  I can really appreciate other artists loose watercolor paintings but it's a joy for me to be very meticulous as I paint with watercolors.

Have a good week.

Snowy Iris
Image size 8" x 8"
Oil

White Lilies on TerraSkin

I had such a good time painting this one.  This is an acrylic painting, but I've used the acrylic watered down like watercolors.  For me, this is my favorite way to use acrylics.  I just don't like the feeling of thick acrylic paint.  I always feel like I'm fighting with it.

The surface I used is Terraskin, that stone and resin 'paper' that I've used that is similar to Yupo.  I love the textures I was able to create in the background.  The reason I used acrylic paint instead of watercolor was because I wanted to use several layers of paint and I didn't want to lose the textured effect as I added more paint.

White Lilies on TerraSkin
Image Size 18" x 24"
Acrylic

Abutilon

I really dislike orange flowers so I'm not sure why I didn't change the color of these in this painting.   I still need to work on these a bit because I'm not sure that they are reading as abutilons, but the paint is too wet to get much detail at this point.  I won't add much more detail but I do want to add some to the one flower at the top that is facing us to make it more of a focal point.

Abutilon
Image Size 9" x 12"
Oil

Sunny Low Country

Deja vu?  Yes, this is the same scene as last week's painting, but this is how it really looked the day that I was there.  It was a beautiful, sunny day with lots of puffy clouds and the temperature was perfect.  I'm not sure which painting I like better.  They each have a very different feeling and it's fun to have the freedom to interpret a scene any way I want.  : )  Ah, we artists have such power!

Sunny Low Country
Image Size 6" X 6"
Oil

Stormy Low Country

In May, I visited some friends in Charleston, South Carolina and I painted this from one of the hundreds of photos I took while I was there.  Of course, in the photo, the sun was shining and the sky was a beautiful blue.  We went to a plantation which had really beautiful grounds and this was one of the views.  The day before, there was a tropical storm watch and a threat of a hurricane - all very exciting/scary so this is my artistic combination of the nice view and the stormy weather.   I think I will also paint the scene with the sun shining, as it is in the photo, later this week.

Charleston is such a beautiful city with such charming people.  I really had a wonderful time and I look forward to painting more of the local scenes and visiting there again some day.

Stormy Low Country
Image Size 6" x 6"
Oil

The Beach

On June 30th, I participated in a plein air workshop given through the Tustin Art League.  Kevin Davidson was the instructor and I really learned a lot.  Kevin is a wonderful artist (and instructor) that works in both oils and watercolor.  For his watercolors, he usually works on yupo paper and is truly a master at it.  He makes it look so effortless.  I find it very frustrating.

For this workshop, he painted in oils.  He did a demo for a little over an hour and then we worked on our own paintings with him giving us pointers.  I find plein air painting just as frustrating as trying to paint on yupo but I'm glad I took this workshop and it does get easier each time I paint on site.  It will never be my first choice in painting experiences because I have a very short attention span.  By the time I get set up I'm usually ready to leave.  Also, I enjoy my creature comforts of being in my studio, close to the kitchen and other facilities.  : )

I am really happy with how this little painting turned out which will probably make me sign up for the next plein air experience with a little less kicking and screaming.

The Beach
Image Size 6" x 6"
Oil

After The Rain

The photo from which this was painted was taken last summer in Burano, which is one of the islands around Venice, Italy.   My husband and I had been there about 10 years ago but it was cloudy then and I didn't get any pictures with sun and shadows so I was very excited to be able to go there again, this time with our kids, so that they could see Venice with its surrounding islands and so that I could get some better pictures.  Of course this time it was raining!  We took the ferry and went to Murano first (an island where glass blowing is common) and just as the ferry pulled up to Burano the sun came out!  Lucky me!

I was happy to see colorful umbrellas throughout the city hanging on the shutters to dry.  It added charm to an already charming place.  So it turns out that the rain was a good thing.  We almost waited until the next day to go because of the rain but it's a good thing we didn't or we wouldn't have seen Burano at all.  That day all of the people that worked in transportation were on strike.  No ferrys, no gondolas, no trash pick up either so I guess it wasn't only the transportation people on strike.

Burano is known for its beautiful lace.  I'm not much of a lace person but it's always interesting to see hand crafted items.  In Burano the buildings are all brightly painted.  The color of this building was turquoise but I changed it because I felt that bright color would take the focus away from the umbrellas - artistic license at work.

After the Rain
Image Size 22" x 22"
Watercolor