Alas, how did it get to be mid-February already? There’s a lot of confusion in the world at the moment, what with the extremely odd weather all over, and the confusion has gotten into my brain as well, I guess. Our apple trees have been blooming for weeks and yes, lucky us. But woe is the tree that blooms 3 months early and then gets hit with freezing rain and snow.
At any rate, now that I’m getting back into my routine after multiple interruptions, I can share snapshots of a few new and in-progress paintings. Yes, despite many and various events I did manage to make time to work on my painting.
If you’re curious about how this one started, there’s a snapshot of the start of this painting and then another of the painting roughly in the middle in the past two blog posts. Here I’m nearing the finish line. At least I think I am. I’ve done a bit of experimenting with iridescent and interference paints, Golden acrylics of course. It’s a bit scary, but I think the small amounts that I’ve used are just enough to make the painting shimmer in a water-like way without overdoing it. Even areas where the interference paint got covered up still seem like there’s some shimmer coming through. I’m not sure if that’s my imagination or not. It’s probably too subtle to see in this photo.
It’s pretty early in the game on this one. A vision of a lovely woman dressed in purple at the Phoenix Art Museum caught my eye several months ago. I took a few photos and then finally stretched a canvas and started on this painting a couple weeks ago. I’m adding layers of matte medium to the left side, which is a view out a window into the sculpture garden. Eventually after multiple layers of matte medium in between painted details, I plan to cover this area with a gloss medium so that (hopefully) it’ll appear like a window. I’ve used both coarse and fine pumice gel mixed with matte medium in the background to simulate the texture of the walls in the museum, painting layers of color over the pumice gels. By the way, this painting is part of my “Nooks & Crannies” series, which is ongoing but has been neglected for awhile. See more on my gallery page.
This vertical water reflection painting is in its infancy. I had a hankering to work on a vertical painting, bought the stretcher bars, stretched the canvas and searched my files of snapshots until I found one that had the colors and the feeling I was looking for. So far this one is fun. But I haven’t made it to the hard part yet!