Not a landscape

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

This painting started as a back lit grove of trees, but once I got into it I just wasn't feeling it. So I started blocking out shapes with a translucent glaze and followed with some glazes of color.

Back to the negative

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

I bought an art tutorial video by one of my favorite painters, Linda Kemp, and I had to give some of her techniques another shot. She is an expert at painting in the negative to create beautiful abstracts that capture the light and colors of nature.

Serendipity

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 20 x 16 inch canvas 

I'm calling this painting Serendipity. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, serendipity is "luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for."

I took an old mixed media collage that was really colorful and had a lot of glass bead gel. I wanted to rein in some of the bright colors. After glazing over most of the painting that wasn't layered with glass beads, it left a few unconnected blobs of color plus a few butterflies I had stamped on the original painting. But then I identified some leaf shapes, started outlining them, did some colored glazes, found more leaf shapes. I kept painting and outlining leaves and collaged some painted paper to add three abstract flowers. And voila, the serendipity of finding a painting full of colorful leaves and flowers.

Another makeover

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 16 X 20 inch canvas 

I decided to make changes to another painting. The original was a collage of painted papers that had some areas I really liked but it was too dark and too green for my tastes. So I decided to used translucent and transparent glazes to cut around the leaf shapes and add more light and color contrast.

Here is the original painting before I did the makeover.

Convention bounce

Painting by Vicky Christensen, mixed media on 16 X 20 inch canvas

I tried something new this time. I collaged newspaper clippings to a canvas and followed with layers of high flow drips, stencils and fluid acrylic glazes. I kind of wish I hadn't done the white outlines but maybe they will grow on me. Or maybe I will use glaze to tone them down.

Edit: I decided to glaze the white outlines. So I updated the photo. I took this one in daylight so the colors look different from the other photo.