Tag: acrylic painting

Ikebana

Ikebana – the beautifully simple and elegant Japanese art of flower arranging.

I don’t know if this would qualify as an elegant flower arrangement, but it is an interesting arrangement of lines and shapes, disguised as an ikebana painted on canvas. Colors, too. And a reflection on a semi-shiny surface. I wanted to explore open space in a painting and how to fill it fairly simply. Maybe an austere environment?

As with the gladioli the other day, I used fluid acrylics on a cotton canvas mounted on board. Many of the same techniques were used, too – vertical and horizontal brushwork using a 1/2 flat brush. When I had reached a point of needing to “finish” the painting, it just didn’t work. I wanted to add some swirls of lines, vetoed it, and decided that some softer shapes with a bit of curve might work. The flowers and leaves were dotted and dabbed in to take away the vertical and horizontal lines of the original ones. I think this worked. But, as this is so different than what I seem to do – a new area of exploration – I am not really sure about it at all!!

Fluid acrylics on cotton canvas on board, 11×14.

Composition & Direction

I have my acrylic pear painting sitting on my easel. It is tilted to the right. I rather like it!

This is how the painting was painted and presented here the other day. Now let’s look at different directions and see how a 90 degree shift impacts the painting for better or worse.

Rotating the painting and adding a signature in the lower right of each image lets you know where the bottom of the image is supposed to be.

The image on the top of these four is the way it is tilted on my easel and what started this idea. I think of the 4, it may be my favorite. The original is conventional, the 2nd is my next; the bottom two are a bit odd for my eye.

This is my preferred variant.

Art for thought! Or, artsy food for thought?

Abstraction & Simplification

Different media create different relationships. Some are pure love – how they handle, results – and others can be total dislike to a love-hate. Things can change, of course, but that comes with time and experience.

Acrylic paint and I have a long love-hate relationship. I love its quick drying time. I hate its plastic feel and difficulty in getting smooth blends, as with oils. I also hate having to fight with thick paint to dilute it and then having to work quickly so that I don’t waste it. Add various mediums to affect its transparency and viscosity and drying time, and, for me, it becomes a war zone of frustration and annoyance. Why bother?

Enter fluid acrylics. These are still plasticky, dry quickly, but they have the consistency of cream. As a result, they are easily used straight up or diluted or blended. The good qualities of acrylic are here – quick drying and easy clean up. I like these a lot but still find they are not suited for the blending and softness of edges I like in oils. Thus, what can I do with them?

Autumn and pears – so, a D’Anjou as a subject, to see how blending can work with a flat brush. Then, just because, I added abstractions of flowers and mandarins. This was to just play with the paint and my own thoughts of simplification and abstraction of a real object. Blending isn’t smooth on the pear, but that was not my intention. Instead, it was to get a feel for the brush and the paint, using the strokes to create shape and depth, but not a photographic copy. I did this about a week ago.

A few days later I decided to do a phalaenopis, or moth orchid, to focus on leaf shapes, flower shapes, and more abstraction and simplification. Additionally, I wanted to play with the background colors to see what and how they can affect the painting. At this point I am not sure where I am at with this painting, but am looking at it to make the decision. If you paint, you know staring at a painting for a bit can determine if it is done or needs more work – and what that work might be.

Finally, this one, a product of yesterday afternoon. With the preceding two paintings, I worked on just becoming familiar with the paint and specific brush as well as some ideas blubbing around in the back of my mind. This, though, was more deliberate in what I chose to do.

The first thing was to create shapes and colors. Pears, of course – they are so versatile and fun! Planes of color and blending of color variants within the planes. For instance, each pear is a given color, and then there are shifts. The top pear has more blended colors, but the remainder are a combination of brushwork for suggestion of dimension, shadow, and highlights. The red pear was hardest as it is less easy to create a believable red pear (IMHO) than with green or yellow ones. I used green and purple blended into cadmium red for the shadow, and a bit of grey to make the highlight in it. As with the pears, the leaves, plate, and background have the same elements of exploration.

Once I had the shapes and painting as I liked, I added lines. I have some acrylic markers in black, grey, and white, and used those to create the lines as well as touch up stems and highlights. This mark making was fun, and helped define areas with a strong line. What I found, though, is that the lines themselves could be a bit much. Thinning paint into a glaze or transparent wash helped tone down some of the intensity of all the marker marks. Glazes also helped to pull together some of the colors more easily.

The leaves were especially a challenge. I like the veins in the leaves but didn’t want to delineate them too much – just suggest them. The same with the leaf shapes and how they fold and catch the light. In the end, simplification, suggestion of light, and then using the markers to create the veins. These were dulled down by washes.

Overall, I am having a lot of fun with this. The pears on the blue plate are my favorite as far as a sense of achieving what I want, but all of them bring something to the table. The acrylic markers give a strong line, and while good, can also be disastrous. Each painting taught something as well as give a sense of satisfaction while opening the doors to further exploration.

Art is always evolutionary!

Fluid acrylic, acrylic markers, paper and canvas on board.

Through the Trees

Another view of Lands End in the SF area – this time through the trunks of the cypress trees along the ridge line.

This was a day’s project using liquid acrylic paints on Strathmore 300 watercolor paper. Neither photographs or scans really did this painting justice as far as the colors go. That sometimes happens when there is purple in a painting it seems. I like the composition but not sure about the final colors. In real life it looks better. And, it may be, too, the acrylics just never quite sit well with me. Both acrylics and gouache tend to be a bit too bright for me. Maybe I’ll try it in oils.

Acrylic on Strathmore 300 watercolor paper; about 11×14.

Carrots

I watched a few videos by Jane Slivka, an acrylic painter out of Florida. She tones her canvas with a reddish orange color, paints in the major shapes in Hooker’s green, adds white for highlights, then proceeds to build her painting. Her paints are heavy body while I have been using fluid acrylics. I thought her process was quite interesting as it is seemingly spontaneous, but not without structure. Her steps give it structure, but she is not a slave to her subject – she sort of moves along with a game plan and no game plan, if that makes sense. 

What really fascinated me was how she actually creates values by working in the lights and darks before adding colors. Additionally, the red tone beneath the brushwork pops through, and adds a bit of sparkle to her paintings. Negative and positive space and shapes are worked back and forth. 

I tried to follow this approach, and found it really quite interesting. In many ways it simplified what I wanted – lights, darks, values, contrast. Carrots are not especially exciting things to paint, but they are quite cheery with their bright colors of orange and green.

Painting the carrots and their tops was really fun. I didn’t take this painting seriously, and sort of slapped around colors, working to see what might be successful, might not be. Never before have I toned a painting surface with cadmium red, but I think it could become a favorite thing to do. Yellow ochre is a wonderful color, but it is not especially dramatic. The little bits of red poking through the greenery is quite pleasing to my eye. I expect I will try more paintings like this.

Golden Fluid Acrylics, Strathmore 300 watercolor paper, 10×14.