The Improper Use Of Gesso

My bet is that this is NOT the way to go about doing an acrylic painting. I never was much good at rules, and will probably reap the consequences of breaking them with this one.

I forgot to show you my initial sketch, which I've been pondering over for the past few days. If you look closely at this, you can see the light outlines in white pastel pencil. I'm now "sketching" in the flower with white gesso. I really don't think you're supposed to sketch with gesso.

So here it is so far. The petals are a little bit skinny, and I'm planning on plumping them up on the second coat (of gesso, of course). Now I'm going to let this sit for a bit so I can watch it some more before I go any further. Um, and I'm waiting on you guys to give me any suggestions for corrections before I go beyond the point of no return!

Meanwhile, today was a beautiful sunny day, with clear blue skies and a light breeze. Perfect, and a very nice break from the rain, which we needed badly.** This watercolor sketch is from the rehab room from the facility where I work in Knoxville. I just love the old apartment buildings next door. The plantings are evergreen, mostly great big old viburnums, with ivy that climbs up around every corner and window, and the light on the brick in the evenings is great. I'm still figuring this new palette out, and got my greens got a little bit dark. That mineral violet can be waaay stronger than I thought, too - but I love it! (Please see the giant purple splotch. Yeah. That one. That's what I'm talking about...)

** Grammatically, it is difficult to tell if I meant we needed the rain or a break from the rain. I guess the answer would be yes. Both.

GAC

Aw, come on. You CAN'T say you didn't know this was coming...

See HERE for more descriptions of Golden's GAC line.

Just a Little Background

I started the background for my giant dahlia painting like this -- squiggles of paint straight onto the canvas -- and then added GAC 100 and smeared it all around...

...until is looked like this. After it dried, it seemed like there were too many brush strokes and lots of little "M" shapes (which may be something I do with the brush when I'm smearing things around), so I glazed it with another layer of blues and greens mixed with glazing fluid and GAC 100...

...which leaves me with this. I think it will work. If you look, you can see there are still some distinct "M" shapes, but the flower itself will cover that up. Tonight I'm going to start working the flower shape over this in white gesso, and we'll see how it goes from there. If it goes well I will show you guys in the next few days. If it goes badly, I'll just gesso the entire thing back to white and start over! I'm determined to knock out an acrylic painting or two.

So. Since we're at the boring art stage, here's a funny video. It's a week late, but cheers anyway!

EDM Challenge One Million and Six - Sky

Okay, it isn't really challenge 1,000,006, but it feels like I'm that far behind. I'd decided that I needed to get back into the habit of doing the Everyday Matters weekly challenges, and when Karen announced that this week's subject was "sky" it suited me fine!

This is from a photo taken during our most recent trip to Florida -- the cloud was forming and rising in the otherwise clear blue sky, and I took several photos of it with the idea that it might work into a painting. I'd already picked up a 24 x 12" canvas to try this on, thinking it would also be good practice with acrylic. I guess that means this meets two challenges for me -- the EDM "sky" challenge and my own personal "acrylic" challenge!

The bottom part isn't nearly finished, and I'm actually not sure the cloud part is done. Acrylics dry so darned fast that they're hard to blend, so I went and picked up some retarding medium today. Anybody know how well this stuff works, or have any suggestions for smoother blending? There are NO good acrylic books out there, at least not that I can find!

On a side note -- The show last night went great -- it was a lot of fun to see friends' work framed and hanging, and it was especially nice to meet several VERY talented artists from east Tennessee's Tri-Cities area. Scott, the manager from our local Jerry's Artarama, was at the show and Jerry's very kindly donated some FREE samples of art supplies AND a great door prize. (Hmmm.... I just realized I probably picked up a little free bottle of acrylic retarder at the show, yet I still went to Jerry's and bought a big bottle , stopping at the same time to say hi to Scott -- I guess that means that his marketing plan worked like a charm!)

Skooshing Up a Storm

... honestly ... I have no idea what I'm doing with acrylics, but this was kind of fun anyway. I mixed all those greys all by myself. And one would THINK that waves would be kind of easy -- just skooshing them on there, but obviously they are not. Still, the skooshing bit was nearly as fun as mixing all those greys. In the future the stormy seas can be left to the the experts!

More about ruts later -- tonight I'm playing!

(The technical bits: Okaloosa Island fishing pier, Ft. Walton Beach Florida -- from a photo taken on a very stormy morning in January. Painted with Golden Acrylics on an actual 16" x 20" CANVAS. Yep. A real canvas. Colors used to make those lover-ly stormy greys were Winsor Blue Red Shade, Cobalt Teal, A Tiny Bit of Hansa Yellow Medium, Much More Nickel Azo Yellow, and Naphthol Red Light -- all with a Dab of Titanium White. I could have just done canvases of streaks of greys, it was so much fun ... )

Artichoke

Just playing around with acrylics. It's harder than it looks!