Red Star Mandala

When I want to create but have little energy, I often turn to the free graphics editing program Sumopaint and make mandalas from images I already have on hand.

This mandala was created from a photo of a painting in progress (shown below).
I really love how the texture of the canvas itself shows up in this mandala and makes beautiful, feathery lines.

The painting in progress is small and simple so far. I'm enjoying the colours.

Golden Light
5"x7"
acrylic on canvasboard

Painting In Progress 1

I've been painting a lot more recently since I tackled (part of) the mess in my studio.
I'm so excited to have my health returned to a level where I can use acrylic paints and glue again! I am returning to my first love of using texture in painting.

Here's a work in progress:


first, paint, then a layer of glue-water mix - half and half, that I used to attach repurposed biodegradable packing peanuts! They end up shrinking and collapsing in fun ways:

It's great to keep old, damaged brushed to use for glue since the glue wrecks a little more each time anyway. You can get more life from a glue brush by washing it with HOT water and soap as soon as possible after using. I use an old toothbrush with soap right on it to scrub the glue brush.


then I used the same glue-water mix to attach pieces of printed napkins. Once the glue dries, the part of the napkin that was white becomes transparent so that just the printing shows. Flowers and a butterfly:


I have since painted the packing peanuts a shimmery pearl white and now I feel stuck in that place of wanting to add more... but afraid of messing it up!
I have soooo many paintings in an unfinished state because of this.

If you'd like to see amazing examples of fearless layered paintings, check out Tara Leaver. She is awesome! And she takes the time and effort to share photos of each step of her panting journeys! Such dedication and patience! I have learned so much as an artist from following her blog.

In Love With Texture - Sculpture Painting

Now that I am starting to be able to use acrylic paints and glue again as my chemical sensitivities are improving, I am starting to get excited about returning to my first artistic love: TEXTURE building.
I am completely in love with building interesting texture and painting over it.
I use various things to build the texture, gluing on whatever calls to me in the moment.
Tissue paper, fabric, brown paper bags, found objects and dried organic objects like leaves, feathers and seed pods... the possibilities are endless when you have glue and can use it!

Here is a sculpture painting from many years ago that I had a lot of fun making:


And another angle with less glare:


A number of years ago I lived in Montreal which has an amazing system of alleys - awesome places for finding strange little bits of this and that simply crying out to be glued onto something and enjoyed :-)
Most of my 'strange stuff stash' has been packed away, awaiting the day I could use glue again. I think it's time to get it out!


Is there anything you've been saving to use 'one day' that you could dig into right now!?

Using wax as a 'resist' in watercolour paintings

I've not been posting much but have been daily drawing, colouring, painting and more.☺

I've tried a number of different waxes as a 'resist' to use with watercolour paints.

So far, crayons did not work well, beeswax worked okay but is very hard and needs to be scraped down after application or it kind of flakes on top and doesn't resist well.
My favourite wax so far is soy wax. I had some around in the form of run off from a soy wax candle and  it works wonderfully!
Soy wax is very soft compared to beeswax and it glides onto the paper nicely without heavy pressure.
The resist does still work best if the wax is pressed down after application - I do this by running the flat back of my thumbnail over it but one could use any flat, hard object that would not damage the paper.

You can use wax directly on the white paper so that the wax lines will show up white (or whatever colour your paper is).  That's what I've done here with the front and back of a bookmark:

or, if you have the patience, you can paint a layer of lighter colour, wait for it to dry (or use a hair dryer on low - keep it moving to avoid scorching the paper), then use the wax over top.  Then you can paint overtop with darker paint colours like I did with the back piece of a page that is destined to be cut up into whimsical bookmarks (squiggly side is back piece done with the lighter and darker paint method, spiral piece is done with the wax directly on the unpainted paper):

Another thing you can do with wax and watercolour is a bit more complicated but tons of fun.
You can draw on the paper first with markers or coloured pens, go over the marker with wax, then use just plain water on a brush to pick up any marker not covered by wax (dab with paper towel if needed), then paint.  If the markers are waterproof such as Sharpies etc, you don't need to to the stage of picking up excess marker with water.
If they are water soluble markers, this stage is necessary unless you don't mind ending up with muddied, icky colours when you paint - the marker colour will mix with your watercolour paint. (I found that out the hard way :-)

a few examples of playing around with that technique:

Space Cucumber Ship

watercolour, marker, beeswax

If you try this out and post on your site/blog, I'd love if you post links in the comments area!  I'd love to see what others do with this.
☺

"Nebula" watercolour

Nebula

3.25"x5"

watercolour