Monday, August 27, 2012

Water Lilies on TerraSkin

I'm working on TerraSkin again.  I just can't seem to put away my acrylics and TerraSkin.  It's my new addiction.  This painting was a bit harder than the paintings I've done on this surface in past weeks, entirely because of my own stupidity.

I've been using a combination of pouring paint and direct painting with the acrylics.  I do several pours initially and then put resist on my design to protect areas from future pours.  Then I add more layers of paint to the background until I get the effect I want.  I am working really wet and because the TerraSkin is not porous, the water and paint sit on the surface and it can take awhile for each layer to dry.  Being the impatient person that I am, I put the painting out in the sun to speed up the drying process because I was excited to add another layer of paint.  I know (from reading and from experience) that paintings with resist should not be put in the sun or exposed to heat (from a hair dryer) because the resist can get gummy.  It's been really hot here this past week so the painting in the sun was probably dry in about 5 minutes and if I had taken it out of the sun in such a short period of time, it might have been okay but I got busy doing something else and forgot about it for about an hour.  The good news is that the paint was dry.  The bad news is that the resist was very gummy and not easy to remove on about half of the areas.

At this point, most reasonable people would have thrown the piece away and started over but I'm stubborn and was determined to save the painting.  I did, but it probably added a couple of hours to the process.  I think it was probably harder to remove from this surface than from paper because the goo just kept sliding around on the surface.  I finally used dry flour on the surface to make the resist more crumbly which worked better than anything else and then removed the final film with alcohol, which didn't work really well.  Maybe I should have tried fingernail polish remover but that may have harmed the surface.  So...don't put a painting with resist in the sun or leave the resist on the surface too long.  I've done that twice so hopefully I have learned from my mistakes now.

Waterlilies on TerraSkin
Image Size 16" x 20"
Acrylic

Monday, August 20, 2012

Wisteria on TerraSkin

Painting on TerraSkin is quickly becoming an addiction for me.  I really love the effects I get when using liquid acrylics on it.  Also, I probably have more acrylic paint than I could use in one lifetime so I might as well use it.  Using watercolor on the TerraSkin is fun too but I really like being able to paint so many layers with the acrylic and know that all of the previous layers are permanent.  Of course, then I am giving up the lifting qualities that are so wonderful with this surface.

Wisteria on TerraSkin
Image Size 18" x 24"
Acrylic

Monday, August 13, 2012

Snowy Iris

Painting this was a bit out of my comfort zone with it being so non-literal but I did have fun with it.  I'm beginning to really like painting with oils.  The thick paint is less of a problem for me than it used to be.  I think I'm just getting used to it although I still prefer the fluidity of watercolors and silk dyes.

Painting more loosely is easier for me with oils than with watercolors.  I can really appreciate other artists loose watercolor paintings but it's a joy for me to be very meticulous as I paint with watercolors.

Have a good week.

Snowy Iris
Image size 8" x 8"
Oil

Monday, August 6, 2012

White Lilies on TerraSkin

I had such a good time painting this one.  This is an acrylic painting, but I've used the acrylic watered down like watercolors.  For me, this is my favorite way to use acrylics.  I just don't like the feeling of thick acrylic paint.  I always feel like I'm fighting with it.

The surface I used is Terraskin, that stone and resin 'paper' that I've used that is similar to Yupo.  I love the textures I was able to create in the background.  The reason I used acrylic paint instead of watercolor was because I wanted to use several layers of paint and I didn't want to lose the textured effect as I added more paint.

White Lilies on TerraSkin
Image Size 18" x 24"
Acrylic

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