More fine lines

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 12 x 12 inch canvas

I was pretty busy today. I painted a few canvases with black gesso, started three paintings and finished one of them. I wanted to play more with my Fineline applicator, so I started with a lot of black lines on a blank white canvas. Then I went into glazing mode. This one was glazed with ultramarine blue, quinacridone red, and my two very favorite colors: quinacridone nickel azo gold and manganese blue hue.

Spring is just around the corner

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 12 x 12 inch canvas

I got some Fineline Needle Applicators from Amazon today and had to try them out. They screw onto a 1 oz. bottle of Golden High Flow acrylic and can be used to draw fine lines using paint straight out of the high flow bottle. I decided to do my experimenting on one of my canvases that I had brushed on paint leftover from previous painting sessions. I got the idea about using the Fineline applicator from a book by Jo Toye, "Abstract Explorations in Acrylic Painting."

The paint will occasionally blob at the end of the needle applicator if you aren't careful, which accounts for the numerous black blobs in the painting. I prefer to think it gives the painting more character. I actually like the uneven line thickness vs. using a more precise applicator such as a refillable paint marker. But I did get more paint blobs than I would prefer.

It just wasn't working

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 14 x 18 inch canvas 

Yesterday was one of those days. I started painting with an idea in my head but things didn't go as planned.

If you can believe it, I started with the intention of painting an abstract version of a colorful village, one of those you see in a travel brochure for coastal Italy, for example. Once I got into it, it just wasn't working for me.

So I started to layer more paint and got a very colorful canvas. I started scraping and painting circles. It looked like this after a while:

I liked the colors but it still wasn't doing anything for me. Since the top layers of the paint was still wet (I was using Golden OPEN paint and medium) I started scraping away paint. It might have been a rash decision  (word of advice, don't make important decisions at 1:00 AM). But what the heck, it's only a painting.

Today I decided to follow the texture that was left on the canvas and started glazing on color. It ended up looking like one of those mosaics that people make from pieces of colored glass. I decided to use a mix of manganese blue hue and titanium white for the 'grout' highlights.

Blue Morpho

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 12 x 12 inch canvas 

Today's painting started with leftover paint on a small canvas. With the addition of Inktense block shavings, glass bead gel, some spritzes of water and more paint it turned into a Blue Morpho butterfly. I painted the butterfly on a Golden acrylic grounds for pastels skin then used gloss gel to glue it on the painting.

Making something old new again

Abstract painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 18 X 24 inch canvas 

This painting used to be an uninspiring seascape, one of the first acrylic paintings I painted a couple years ago. I decided to give it a new life as an abstract. I started with Inktense blocks that I used to draw some lines, first along the waves of the original painting and then added more lines and shapes. I used acrylic glazing liquid to wet the dry Inktense lines then began to randomly apply paint with a palette knife. I developed the painting further with brushed layers of color.

Color, and more color!

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 12 x 9 inch canvas panel 

Here's another little abstract. As with the last painting, this one began with leftover paint on a canvas panel  (see my previous post). I loved the vibrant colors that were already on the canvas so I played off of them. This makes me think of molten spheres of colored glass.

Little abstracts

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 9 x 12 inch canvas panel 

I hate to waste paint so I usually off-load paint left on my palette to some surface that can be used in another painting. Lately I've been using 9 x 12 inch canvas panels. This painting was done on a panel that had a lot of texture and several layers of leftover paint. It looks a little like fish to me, but change the orientation and it could be something completely different. 

The bottom photo is the current state of my latest 9 x 12 panel. I like the colors and some of the shapes. What will it become? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Work in progress

A place for everything, everything in its place (sort of)

I inaugurated my 'new' art room by painting a couple abstracts today. I was trying some new techniques I learned from an online course taught by Julie Prichard and Chris Cozen. In case you're interested, check out http://thelandoflostluggage.com/new-products-1/, Layer Love 2.0. The techniques rely on the longer open time of Golden OPEN acrylics, which is useful for wet into wet blending, scraping back to old layers and monoprinting.

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 12 x 16 inch canvas panel 

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 12 x 16 inch canvas panel 

Both of these paintings were done over old paintings, and a little of the old paintings is showing in each case. Extra credit if you can find the originals amongst my old blog posts.

Here's what my new art room looks like now:

OK, so I didn't put everything back in its place.

Creating a space for creating art

This is my current art studio:

You guessed it, my kitchen. It has everything I need, including good lighting and a water supply. But frankly, I want my kitchen back.

Today I made the first step towards reclaiming my kitchen. Last week I freed up some space in my guest bedroom and bought some Closet Maid shelving at the Home Depot and today I installed the shelves:

My stud finder died after finding the center stud but fortunately it was easy to find the stud to either side, since they were the standard 16 inches apart. It didn't take much time to drill the holes and screw the top bracket to the wall. And trust me, I even used a carpenter's level to make sure it's reasonably level. I plan on using these shelves for my bottles and jars of paint and mediums, and anything else I like to keep close at hand while I'm painting. My painting table will go underneath the shelves.

I used this room previously for pastels. I relocated my pastels and related equipment to a different side of the same room:

Next up: moving all my acrylic equipment and supplies to the room. I'm going to miss having the kitchen sink nearby for cleanup. But a few weeks ago, after reading some articles on being more friendly to the environment when disposing acrylic paint waste I started minimizing my use of water for brush cleanup, and started following other practices to avoid flushing acrylics waste water into the sewer.

I'm also a little worried about getting paint (and water) on the carpet but I'm hoping my handy canvas tarp will take care of that. I just need to remember not to get carried away when I am spattering paint.

Crackle paste experiment - butterfly garden

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 12 x 9 inch canvas panel 

I've been dying to try Golden crackle paste but I wanted to experiment first. I had a canvas panel that I had been covering with paint left over from previous paintings and thought it would be a good substrate to experiment on since it was small (9 x 12) and rigid.

I covered the panel with the paste and let it dry for a few days. I applied the paste a little thinner than recommended (I have read that you should use at least 1/16 inch, and some people recommend at least 1/8 inch). The thicker the application, the bigger the cracks.

After letting it dry and waiting for the cracks to develop I moistened the surface with water, then applied fluid acrylics and allowed the paint to spread over the absorbent surface. I used the paint like a stain, wiping some of it off with a paper towel. As I was playing with the paint I sprayed it to rewet it and that led to some interesting effects.

Crackle paste is pretty fragile so when the paint was dry I covered the surface with a couple layers of matte medium. Tonight I finally got around to finishing the painting by painting the coneflower and butterfly.

Next time I use crackle paste it probably will be on a cradled wood panel primed with black gesso.


PS, the inspiration for the coneflower and butterfly was a photo taken by Lynne P. Alexander Hollingsworth.