A Painting A Day

I hung these two abstracts at Market Central today. They are 24"x24" canvases gallery wrapped and then coated with clear resin.

 They were really fun to do, and finishing them with clear resin really made a difference. I like it that they could be hung any number of ways - both pointed up, pointed down, white together or red together. They were an experiment and I used a lot of paint making them. I really like the way they turned out!

Painted this over the weekend. It's large for me - on a 24"x48" gallery wrapped canvas.

I did it in acrylic because I didn't have time for oil paint to dry. I wanted to get some work out to Market Central because my artist friend Glenda Brown and I are sharing a wall.

Janice Joplin is incredibly hard to capture. Her looks and even her features seem to change from picture to picture... so I just focused on the picture I was working from.

Acrylic is also a challenge for me because I don't use it very often. I was really impressed with the masterson palette I used, because over the course of the three days I was working on it, the paint didn't dry out. That was really impressive. But working with the acrylic seems sluggish. The paint gets sticky so fast there's no time to blend your colors on the canvas. I used a gel medium with the paint to try to keep it pliable but it still dried too quickly. I do believe there are some mediums on the market I can get to slow down the drying time - I might look into that. I just need the paint to stay workable for long enough to blend. It may have also been that I wasn't using enough water while painting. On the flip side, the whole reason I used acrylics was for the fast drying time. So I guess you can't have it all!

 I was encouraged with this portrait because my husband liked it so much, he actually wanted to keep it!

Lisa Balton and I put on a "Paint your own Abstract" painting party at the Fountain Gallery yesterday. It was a wonderful success! The participants all brought their own canvases and an idea of what they wanted to paint - we supplied paint, brushes, and a little guidance - mainly helping them mix the right colors and achieve the result they were looking for. So proud of them! Their paintings were fantastic!
 
Leah did a non representational abstract that she conceived!

 
Kristi did two 12x12 paintings working from a picture but changing the colors - great palette knife texture!

 
Nancy was another creative girl who came up with her concept!

 
Charlene did a great job with this abstract landscape of a sunset over water!

   
Here are the dance girls - Michelle (far right) did a beautiful job - love the colors she used!

 
Our other Michelle in the group did the cutest little squares - her use of color and texture on these was fantastic!

 


So I'm excited to now be at Market Central, and will devote some time to putting together more art for this wall!!!

I I'm having a bit of a painting problem lately where I can't seem to find a subject that holds my interest. So I started looking on you tube and found a ton of interesting faces. This one in particular stood out to me. Love her full purple lips!

It's been so long since I posted! Crazy busy lately! I have been productive and have been painting, just not posting... haha!

 I put a few hanging systems around the house. One in my office so I could get my paintings off the ground, and another in the kitchen. We have a very modern kitchen and so I painted a couple of abstracts that seemed to suit the room. ;)

This one was my fav of the two. Here's the other:
 

I plan to put a clear coat of epoxy resin on them. It will be an experiment since I've never done it before. I've ordered the stuff but it won't be here until the 18th so will have to wait a while.

Happy painting!