My mysterious lady in purple painting has mysteriously taken a different direction. For the last few days, I’ve been working away making subtle changes. Suddenly yesterday afternoon after working ferociously for hours, low & behold, I was looking at a totally different painting.
I added coarse molding paste to the floor in the foreground over the top of what was there. I reduced the texture effect in the area around the woman by adding matte gel medium via palette knife. Then I added light molding paste with titan buff and a bit of yellow (don’t ask me which) and scraped it over the top of the dried matte medium. I got into adding iridescent stainless steel (coarse) fluid here and there.
I completely changed the problematical vertical wall edge on the far right. Still problematical? I don’t have a clue. I added a sculpture stand on the left side of the painting. Oh, I got rid of the sculptures previously on top of the other two sculpture stands.
What in the world did I do? Am I worried? Am I discouraged? Anyone in their right mind would be. But actually, this is what I love about painting. It’s the challenge. And the flexibility of the materials. No rules. At this point what do I have to lose beside days and days of work?
Having all kinds of materials on hand and knowing what they do makes it really fun. I feel like a car mechanic Or maybe like a surgeon, with all the right tools at my disposal. It’s just a matter of figuring which one to use where.
One bonus of teaching workshops is all the learning I get to do. I’ve done a lot of experimenting with gels, pastes & grits, some of which I had used in the past but many are new to me. I experiment when I’m making samples for my classes. That experimenting pays off when I’m working on an actual painting. I have so many more options than I did before I took the Golden Artist Educator program workshop last Fall. With thanks again to my Golden Acrylic Color company friends.
Now let’s see how I use all this to resolve this painting.
Here she is after all the dramatic changes yesterday.
To be polite and helpful, I should probably show the previous sequence of photos of this painting. Alas, I can’t seem to locate them. But if you’re interested you can check back to previous posts to compare.