Tag: Mixed Media

New mixed media

There are many things influencing my outlook on life at the moment – some very positive (like moving to our own house very soon – yay, no more renting!) and others not quite as positive (like waiting to find out if we will be able to permanently care for my baby granddaughter – we will only know the answer to that one at end of July).   My youngest son is also now seriously making plans to move over to the UK to be with us all – so that thought is very much at top of mind all the time and I was thinking about that a lot when I started painting this abstract.   It was great to get back to canvas and something larger than the work I’ve been doing lately.

I used a lot of layers in this work, using inks mixed with structure gel and acrylics mixed with gloss gels and other medium.  It was a cathartic experience,  no matter what happens in life, family are the most important – at least they are to me.  And sometimes family comprise people who are not your blood relatives.  I hold them all close to my heart, they give me light …

 

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‘DIVE’

Acrylics, inks, gels, structure gel on stretched canvas.

69cm x 59cm or  27″ x 23″

View of the work on one of my easels:

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Texture close ups  (lots of texture!):

This work is available to purchase.

New mixed media

Quite some time ago I started working on a series of paintings relating to the South African landscape, for some reason I didn’t finish that work.  I decided to go back to one of them over the weekend and this is the result, might still do a bit more tweaking (as always!).  This area holds a very special place in my heart (and psyche).  It is one of the most beautiful parts of the world, glorious in any weather.  This is a view of the ampitheatre from the river below. (My own reference photos)

Drakensberg

For this one I used acrylic inks, soft pastels, then oil pastels on mixed media paper.  Paper size is 16.5″ x 11.5″ (A3), painting takes up all surface of the paper.

 

Commission – completed

The brief I was given from my client was to paint her a picture of her field, which lies behind her offices and home in a rural area of South Norfolk.  She wanted a representation of the field in winter and depending on how that went, would probably ask me to do another painting of the field in summer.   The field or meadow doesn’t have any major features in it, other than a small coppice of trees and a separate area for her rescued chickens.   I knew that she didn’t want me to include the chickens in the finished painting, so I couldn’t mess about with that idea, which was actually what I wanted to do!  Chickens make excellent subjects for paintings!

I did have a few issues with the process of painting the required picture and had several different ideas of how to approach it.  So, I decided to present her with three versions last Friday and let her decide which one or ones she wanted to keep.

The first one is a realism approach taken from a photograph.  I wanted to capture the wintery light and bare branches, the grass was still quite luminous and deeply green.  This is on stretched canvas – 19″ x 16″.  Acrylics over inks.

 

Trees R 1

The second painting was more like the kind of style I enjoy doing, especially when it comes to depictions of trees.  Also on stretched canvas, same size (19″ x 16″) but portrait style.   I used an acrylic ink underpainting, topping it off with oil pastels and oil paints.

 

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The third painting was totally abstract and processed using gels, inks and acrylic paint on an artist canvas board.  This is about twice the size of the stretched canvas paintings.  I forgot to take a photo with my Canon before I took them to the client, and only have this mobile phone photo.

ABstract field

My client was so thrilled with all the paintings that she’s decided she wants all of them!  She is going to get them professionaly framed and then I will return to her home and take photos of these paintings in frames.  I am overjoyed that she really liked all the work, her husband especially liked the middle painting.  She has also decided to feature the paintings in prominent areas of her home – originally she was only going to place the paintings against a wall in one of the corridors leading into her house.

New series – flower studies.

These are the first in a series of flower studies.

All on A3 double gesso-ed acrylic paper.

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‘Cosmos – mixed’

Oils blended with glazing medium on acrylic inks background.

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‘Daisies in sunlight’

Acrylics on acrylic ink background.

 

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Oil pastels and paints – blended with glazing medium on acrylic ink background.

‘Cosmos -2’

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‘Pastel poppies’

Oil pastels blended with glazing medium