Pastel Bougainvillea

This is a small painting, only 3" x 15" but I really like the format.  Long, skinny paintings and square ones are my favorites.  I used a scrap piece of dark green archival mat board that I coated with pumice gel to make it like a sanded pastel paper.  It was fun to work on this surface because it grabbed a lot of pastel and it was nice to have the background color there before the painting was even started.  The color in this photo is a bit washed out.  It's more vibrant in real life.

I've cut my own mats for years so I have a lot of scrap mat boards that I just can't seem to throw out, even when they get this small.  But see, there is a reason for keeping them!  I'm kind of crazy about recycling and it's hard for me to throw an object out if I think it can still be used for something.  No, I'm not a hoarder, except maybe with art supplies.  It feels good to make something creative using what would be considered trash by a lot of people.

Pastel Bougainvillea
Image Size 3" x 15"
Pastel

Soft Yellow Clivias

What a fun week!  I attended a three day workshop with Karen Frey, an incredible watercolor artist and teacher.  I've always admired her work and been amazed by her control of water and paint in her paintings so I was thrilled to be able to learn from her.  Check out her website.  She's also a master in encaustics and works in a realistic style that I haven't seen any other encaustic artist achieve.

She's a little dynamo with a lot of knowledge to impart but her techniques will take me a lot of practice to master.  She made it look so easy but I know that comes from years of experience.  This was my painting that I worked on during the three days.  It's a lot looser (in the background) than I'm used to doing and I am really happy with the runs and softness in it.  I can't wait to try another painting using her techniques.  As I was finishing this at home, her voice was in my head coaching me and I hope I will still hear that as I'm painting my next painting.  Timing and the ratio of water to paint are very important to her technique.  There is so much to remember and I hope I can retain that as I paint in the future.

Soft Yellow Clivias
Image Size 15" x 22"
Watercolor

Waiting For Weather

I wish our sky looked like this right now!  I'm so tired of the heat and humidity.  I shouldn't complain because it's fairly rare weather for our area but we've been dealing with it for well over a month and I would like some nice cool rain.

I know the majority of the country has been dealing with heat and humidity for the entire summer and I'm sounding like a real sissy but I'm used to our usual mild and dry summers.  I thought that painting something that looked cool and wet would make me feel better and maybe act as a suggestion for some cooler weather - an artistic rain dance.  After all, it is Fall now.  We probably won't get any rain for at least a month or two but I can dream, can't I?

This is an oil painting on a small stretched canvas.  I did an under painting of red and after it was dry I used a very limited palette of muted colors, letting pieces of the red show through.

Waiting For Weather
Image Size 6" x 6"
Oil

Lake Powell Canyon II - Acrylic on TerraSkin

This is painted from the same photo as last week's painting.  The colors and lighting are pretty different though.   This painting is much larger than last week's and the majority of the painting was poured using liquid acrylics.  I went pretty bold with the color.  It's much brighter in real life.  There are things that I like best about each painting but I can't decide which one I like better overall.  I would love to have your comments.

Lake Powell Canyon II
Image Size 25" x 17.5"
Acrylic on TerraSkin

Lake Powell Canyon - Watercolor on TerraSkin

Here is a small painting on TerraSkin.  This time, I used watercolor instead of acrylics.  It was a bit harder to build layers since the watercolors are very liftable on the TerraSkin.  The one exception was the color that I used in the sky.  For some reason, these blues didn't want to lift and, of course, I started with the sky and wasn't very careful because I expected to be able to lift off my messy areas.  The blues I used were ultramarine and cerulean which aren't staining colors so I'm not sure why that happened.  I think I'll try this scene on a larger scale with the acrylics and do some pouring.

We used to go to Lake Powell every year on a houseboat so I have lots of pictures from there.  Lake Powell is so beautiful with the sculptural rocks and the natural blue/orange complementary color scheme.  Nature's so amazing!  The sky there really is ultramarine blue at the top blending into cerulean blue at the horizon.  No wonder I like using those colors in my skies.  Of course, we don't see those kind of skies here in So. Cal. but I do know they exist.

Lake Powell Canyon
Image Size 12.5" x 9"
Watercolor on TerraSkin

WIP slideshow for Watery World on TerraSkin

Here is the WIP slideshow for Watery World.  I think it was harder and took more time to make this than it did to paint the painting.

I've decided that I need to stick with painting and stay out of the technical world as much as possible.  It's much too stressful!

The music that is playing is "Fingerdance" by Billy McLaughlin.

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