String gel texture

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic paint and mediums on 16 X 12 inch canvas panel 

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic paint and mediums on 12 x 12 inch canvas 

Today's paintings have been in the works for a few days due to the drying time between layers. This is another experiment based on examples I found in Jo Toye's book, Abstract Explorations in Acrylic Painting. I primed the surface with black gesso, let it dry thoroughly then drizzled on Liquitex string gel. Toye's book suggested using Golden clear tar gel, but I already had the Liquitex gel, a similar product. After letting the gel dry the next step is to paint white gesso on and quickly scrape it away to leave the black showing through the raised texture of the clear gel. You can use a credit card  (an expired one :) ). I used a Catalyst silicone wedge.

After scraping the white gesso I ĺet the canvases dry for another day.  Today I painted with transparent fluid acrylics thinned with a little glazing liquid. I really like the effects and look forward to using this technique again.

Black, white and a lot of glaze

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 16 x 20 inch canvas

After a couple days of coughing and sneezing (AKA common cold) I felt like painting again. I did a little work on a couple experimental painting and set them aside to dry then finished today's painting. This is another one that began with black high flow acrylic and a Fineline applicator. The final layer was glazes of various colors. I found another excuse to use my favorite manganese blue hue and quinacridone nickel azo gold. Other colors used: quinacridone magenta, anthraquinone blue and green gold (all Golden fluid acrylics).

Gesso pulling

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 16 X 12 inch canvas panel 

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 16 X 12 inch canvas panel 

I'm still experimenting with techniques from Jo Toye's book, Abstract Explorations in Acrylic Painting. Today I finished a couple that use the 'gesso pulling' technique. This involves starting with swatches of fluid paint, then dragging white gesso down from the wet paint swatches. The final layers include glaze and scribbles of high flow acrylics.