Process painting, acrylic

Sometimes painting is more about the process than the end product. This piece was inspired by my Artist Way group, and started with a meditation to tap into the creative flow. I was feeling artistically blocked because of so much other "stuff" going on in my life. To represent that my "plate is full", I traced a circle using a paper plate onto a piece of paper. I wrote everything on my mind out onto the "plate": stresses, worries, things to do, etc. Occasionally I would write a positive word just to raise my energy. After I had filled the plate, I glued it down onto another piece of paper. Using acrylic paint, I put down a background color. Then I started coloring over all of my negativity with bright yellow, imagining the bright sun washing away all of my worries, while letting my positives peek through.  As I continued to cover up the plate with paint, it transformed from a sun to a sunflower. I still know all the writing is under there, but I need to remember to focus on the positives!

Hand painted coasters

I feel homemade gifts are always the best. They carry a certain charm and, in my opinion, are better than the gift cards that people always resort to. Here is a great last-minute gift idea...monogrammed coasters! These "coasters" were purchased at a local hardware store in the tile department. Then with black acrylic paint, I monogrammed each tile. I always have trouble making lettering look exactly the same, so I did a little font research and created "B" in four different ways! I'm not sure if I need to put a clear coat on top to extend the life of the paint...I like the matte, rustic look so I skipped it.

Painting coquito bottles

Every year around Christmas, we make a batch or two of coquito, a Puerto Rican version of spiked egg nog. The Puerto Rican tradition is to gift hand-painted bottles full of coquito, then the following year they return the empty painted bottle for a refill.  I painted a bunch back in 2012, but never got all of them filled. My wife was too attached to a few of them and didn't want to give them away!

Painting on a glass bottle is an interesting challenge. We invited some friends over this year to paint their own bottles. The problem is that we kept drinking the coquito! The skull is the one I created this year for my daughter...not necessarily for coquito. The other ones are bottles I painted two years ago.

This year's bottle painting

Christmas cards (or Holiday cards!)

I got together with my Artist Way group to make Christmas cards. They really go all out with materials and supplies, because they love to experiment with different processes and multimedia. I'm more of a purist myself but it's good to get out of my comfort zone once in a while. Here are some Christmas cards that I created. I actually started with a sheet of watercolor paper that someone else had started with a blue and green wash. She said it didn't turn out like she wanted, but I thought it would be perfect for a background (and I hated for it to go to waste). Then I added more paint and stamped them. The first two are my favorite...

  For this last set of cards I really went out of my comfort zone with stamps and glitter! (It doesn't show up well in my photos though)

Although I call them Christmas cards, only this second to last one says Christmas, so I suppose "holiday cards" is a more appropriate title...good for EVERY occasion!

Angel of light and love

My Artists Way group gets together once a month to be creative in some way or another, as well as getting us out of our comfort zones sometimes. This month we worked on collaborative projects to be donated to Collage for a Cure. It is a fun process working on a painting with another artist, bouncing creativity off each other yet practicing having no attachment.  I worked with fellow artist Teresa Rodriguez on this piece, using acrylic on watercolor paper. Acrylic is still not my favorite  medium,  but it sure made the process different  as we built up layers of paint, very unlike watercolor.
I also have to give credit to Tina Greene for coordinating the donation process, and helping with the framing!

Meditative art with Artists' Way for the New Year 2014

My Artists' Way group got together to bring in the New Year with some meditative art. We laid background color first, just whatever inspired us. Then we came up with one word that would be our intention for the year 2014 - I picked JOY...I can always make a situation better by looking at it from a state of joy! With this word in mind, we went on a guided visualization/meditation.  This is what came to me...a big oak tree (no surprise since being out in nature always brings me joy!) with a little door...kind of adds that little bit of curiosity to what is inside?  I did a quick sketch with a ball point pen just to get my ideas down and then went to work on the canvas. I love the bright colors that I created in the background before I even knew I was going to paint a tree! I get more comfortable with acrylic every time I work with it.  Quite unlike my Empowered Kids logo which took over 6 months, this was done in less than 2 hours.  I think I captured my sketch very well with the painting.

 I used a gold paint for the word "joy" so it really catches the light, I love it!

Here are some of the other creations made by the others in the group...what a creative group we have!

The background with some texturing added in

Here is my intention on the canvas

Empowered Kids' logo acrylic painting

I've been working on this for quite a while and have been working on a lot of new things. I started this project with stretching my first canvas. Then white washed it with primer...it stretched it so tight the frame boards warped a little. Definitely the biggest piece I have worked on by far at 4 ft x 4 ft. The concept was to combine the imagesof the kids holding hands around the world and the ripple effect to create a logo for the Empowered Kids program at Clarity Academy of Spiritual Arts.

I started with just a big blue circle...and it sat like that for a long time as I mulled over what this was going to look like. Once I started putting down the kids bodies, I was inspired. I was finally on a roll and really got into the details on each of the kids, especially on each of the faces and outfits.  Some of them are loosely based on actual kids in the Empowered Kids program!
Now I just need to figure out how to un-warp the frame ...maybe some braces in the corners to straighten it out? Otherwise, I can pull the canvas off the frame altogether and hang it on dowels...

   

Study of a Sunflower

Playing with other mediums other than watercolors keeps me on my toes. I started with a colored pencil sketch of a sunflower from imagination.

  Then I tried translating that into acrylic on canvas. Acrylic is definitely my weakest medium here. Some people love it because it is a forgiving medium, but I still don't have a strong grasp of it.

Starry night

We were at a friend's house trying to figure out a Sip & Paint class...Drink & Draw?  Painting & Partaking? Anyways, we were deciding on a painting to create with non- artist type people that were there just to have fun and we decided on Van Gogh's Starry Night. Although it looks simple enough, and was very fun to paint for me, it is very complex. The impasto brush strokes, those small and short ones throughout the painting are very difficult too duplicate.  And then to complicate things even more, I was working with acrylic paint, which I rarely do...but the wine helped :) My favorite part was actually the little town.

Here is Van Gogh's original Starry Night:

My preliminary watercolor sketch:

And my acrylic rendition:

And the one my friend Rhonda did (still not quite complete):

Baby Wipe Painting

I'm always willing to try new things.  A friend of mine from my Artist Way group told me of this process of applying paint with baby wipes of all things. "Forget the brushes!" I thought, "Let's give this a try!" On a 3/4 inch thick piece of plywood (8 in x 10 in) I used the baby wipe to apply two different colors of acrylic paint. and within 5 minutes, I had created a sunset (or I suppose it could be turned upside-down for a sunrise).  The moisture of the wipe helped spread the paint on the untreated wood.  The grain still shows through to give it that ethereal look. I also applied paint to the sides of the board for a more completed look without a frame.

Acrylic Class

For my birthday, my wife had gifted me an acrylic painting class at Michael's.  I had been commenting that I had been seeing a lot of plein aire painters using acrylic and that was never a class that I had taken in college. I think one of the things that has held me back was the cost, but as I looked into it more, the paint can be about the same cost as watercolor paint.  Of course that doesn't say much because prices vary SO much depending on the brand and quality of paint.  I'm still in the "cheap as you can get" stage, but the class recommended a basic starter kit including a couple of canvas boards, a brush, a palette knife, and 4 tubes of paint for around $25 (I forget if that was the price before or after the 40% off coupon at Michael's).  

The class was was on a Saturday morning and focused on painting a landscape.  I wasn't sure what to expect, having never been to a Michael's class or any painting class. The teacher had a specific paintings that she had created for us to copy.  The students got to choose which one since some of the students had come before and had already painted some of them (returning students is a good sign she's a good teacher!).  Since there were only 4-5 students in the class, the teacher was able to give each of us individual instruction and steps to work on as she walked around to the others. She walked me through each layer of the painting starting with the evergreens in the back, through the details of shadows and even the cardinal.  Luckily, she shared her plethra of paint colors because it would have been quite the challenge matching her coloring with the primary colors I had!  

The interesting thing about acrylic painting is the layering of colors to create depth, and if there is too much of one color then you add more of another. The white trees in the foreground don't have to be planned out because the paint will go right over it. There is no fear of "mistakes" because you just paint over it! This is much more forgiving than watercolor, but it does have a different effect than the watercolor process.  I'll have to consider using this for plein aire painting, but copying someone's painting is a lot different than copying nature.  And having the artist right next to me giving me pointers is always nice, too!  God just isn't as good at giving pointer's when you're copying his artwork!