Saturday, May 6, 2017

PALATE CLEANSER





After working on such a large project, something quick and simple was just the thing to get back to painting!  I've had several books on painting techniques out of my comfort zone and found an idea I had been wanting to try for some time. Using a masking pen, I laid down some free form lines - arcs, round shapes, zig zags, interrupted lines and such. Made some connecting lines. Kept things simple but tried to vary the shapes created.  Next came the color.  For this exercise I used Golden fluid acrylics.  I thinned a few colors with a bit of water and poured each color  across the surface of the paper.  After this was dry, I went back and did some shape painting with pretty much full strength paint (but thinned the darker colors a bit).  While some areas were still wet, I spritzed on some alcohol from a sprayer I had. Once all this was dried, the masking fluid was peeled off and the painting evaluated.  The color blocks were doing good but more detail was needed.  Out came the color pastels and Inktense color sticks.  Lines and marks were added.  Still needed more detail so out came the white ink with a dip pen. My dip pens have been hanging around from my high school art days and it was really fun to put them to use again!  Lots of lines and marks were created with the white ink.  Once this was accomplished it was time to stop.  The mat color decision was made and cropping the painting left over a nice size scrap that turned into a couple of note cards.  Not bad for a couple of day's work!

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