Saturday, January 23, 2010

Painting, interrupted

and for the 5th time i rejected my Tree of Life project. the reason: not being able to achieve the desired transparency. i am not feeling secure with acrylics. i am picky, perfectionist. i cannot lift the damn paint off the board. i have to cover it every time I make a mistake, because it dries so fast. after 3 or 4 layers, you have a thick thing that cannot be redone. it creates disharmony with the rest of the painting that came out fine. and there you go try to find a solution for it. and then you have a snowball of problems. and all your vision goes down the drain. is that the end of my love affair with the acrylics?

guess it is time to hold my ambition and experiment more before going for huge 20 x 30 paintings.

my plan: come back to my old technique with watercolors and using acrylics for glazing and highlights.

now a little thing I made yesterday:




Sunflower and Moon
Watercolor and graphite on paper,
5 x 9.5


Sunflower and Moon was created to be the symbol of the Artessence project. The idea was to represent the  inner world, emotions and the feminine polarity (Moon) interacting with the Spirit, expression and masculine polarity (Sun). The sunflower represents creativity blossoming.

4 comments:

Janine said...

That is a beautiful painting!

About the acrylics...have you tried using a glazing medium to mix your paint with?

Patricia Ariel said...

no, Jan, I didn't try anything but water to mix the paints. i think that the main problem is not being able to remove the paint when something goes wrong... like i do with watercolors... acrylics is quite strong and aggressive (masculine medium!), and it is somehow "fighting" with my style. i'm trying new approaches though. thanks for the tip!

MoonSpiral said...

There is always gesso when you make a mistake :), but I guess you are wanting thin layers of paint left and you really can't do that working on paper with acrylic. Acrylic dries slower on canvas, and if you use the slow-dri medium with it is dries even slower. I really only like working with acrylic on canvas.

Ariel said...

Tammy: yes, you're alright. I don't want to lose the transparency, but at the same time i like the brightness. but i've been developing other ways to do it. i've been working with both watercolors + acrylics, WC to "prepare the ground", and then I reinforce it with AC, in thin layers, to give me the desired boldness. i've been thinking seriously about using that slow-dry stuff. my basic restriction to canvas is: i don't know what to do with my pencil drawing on its surface. maybe penciling on gesso? never did it, does it work fine? my penciling is part of my personal style and, so far, i don't plan to start rendering my figures in paint. i very much appreciate your input. it's always good to hear from more experienced artists. i'm a total newbie in acrylics, ya know :)

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails