Still testing the water for works paintings

This is another of the larger experiments as I feel my way towards a process I am happy with for the Freezing Works series of paintings. The process is much the same as with my previous post. I am still feeling good about this general direction, if not the actual result so far, which needs a lot more work yet.

Working on the works paintings

Just so you know that I really have been working – even though I have not posted much of late. I am still not sure how I want to tackle the actual paintings so have been doing some more experiments, working bigger this time (about A3 size).

I started with a layer of old sewing pattern collaged onto heavy watercolour paper with gel medium. This gave me some text and lines, much like the graffiti that is all over the works buildings. Next I put on really loose washes of Golden Fluid Acrylics, with no real scheme in mind. Over that I added more lines, this time using ink and a fine needle, courtesy of our vet clinic! Once all that had dried I started adding more colours, making some of the colour a bit more opaque, thinking about where the light and shadows are. These are still really only just beginning, but I think I may have found a direction I like…

Crusade #33 – back to school

Michelle’s challenge over at the GPP Street Team this month is to learn something new, either in or out of the studio – you can read all about it here. I decided this month I would learn to let go of the results a bit more, and just enjoy the process. In the spirit of going back to school I have been reading about the creative process, about play, and about some new cutting-edge techniques - trying to make my objective an active on. Some of the books I have dipped into have included Nita Leland’s “The new creative artist“, Nancy Reyner’s “Acrylic revolution” and Lisa Cyr’s “Art revolution“.  

Moving on from reading, I have been playing with looser backgrounds as beginnings to works, collage, enhancing digitally then printing and working further on paper. In the image shown here I photographed a chook in amongst some weeds, made a loose background with texture, collaged the photo on, added some old watercolour painting strips on top, scanned and enhanced digitally. Is it a masterpiece? Not at all. Did I let go off the results and just learn through play? Yes.

Thanks Michelle – my “back to school” lesson was one I needed to start (re)learning.

After George Morandi

As a member of the NZ Art Guild, I try to take their challenges as often as I can. Sometimes it is about using a particular style or technique, sometimes it is about being inspired by a certain artist. The most recent Master’s Month artist was George Morandi. I had not heard of him, so some research was needed. You can see some of his work here.

I had two attempts at this; the first was a watercolour which focused on the way he let shapes run into each other by using wet in wet colours. Morandi’s watercolours also had a lot of white space, and quite distinct shapes.

For my second attempt I reworked one of his oil paintings as a collage using hand painted paper, scrapbook papers, glue, ink and pen. The collage won the ‘most creative use of the theme’ award.

Ever wondered about fine art collage?