Simple Paintings 3 & 4

Tags

acrylic paint, acrylic paintings, acrylic paints, mountains, Simple Paintings, tonal study, waves

Here are my paintings from yesterday and today.

This painting was practice in creating a simple gradient.

This painting is a simple tonal study. I think these paintings will make fabulous backgrounds for mandalas! I’m enjoying using acrylics in large shapes of color. That is one of the things I really wanted to work on and it is starting to have an impact on my art journal, too. Stay tuned!

I hope you have a beautiful day.

Lenten Offering: Simple Paintings

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acrylic paint, acrylic paints, dictionary page, dictionary page art, Etsy, learning to paint, mandalas, painting

Yesterday in church our pastor was talking about the practice of giving up something for lent. She also talked about increasing an activity or behavior instead. I’m going to focus on using what I already have for art supplies and really focusing on painting. Well, I have been playing around with this book about learning how to paint with acrylics through the creation of 50 small paintings. I have done one and they make lovely backgrounds for mandalas.

So my plan is to make a painting a day as much as possible and work on the mandalas on the days I can’t paint. We are going to be heading back to WI in a few weeks and I wanted something more portable for while we are traveling.

Here is the book and the 2 paintings I did yesterday.

As you can see I learned that using masking tape on the dictionary pages doesn’t work very well so I’m just trying to keep tidy edges. One thing that is interesting about the picture of fields and trees is that the darker field is on the word “field” on the dictionary page. That was totally coincidence, but once I noticed it I tried to keep that part translucent. Something I learned in the making of the painting is that you can combine Mars Black with Cadmium Yellow Light to make the darkest green of the trees. The Moonlight Delight painting is for sale in my Etsy store. More paintings will be available by the end of Lent.

Celebrating 23 Years

Tags

acrylic paints, art, art journal, collage, paper collage

Last Sunday was our 23rd anniversary! We went out to a play on Saturday and to dinner with friends on Sunday. Also on Sunday people started bringing their pieces of the community mandala back. We got less than half of them back and I’m hoping we get a lot more this week. They used my Celestial Mandala as the cover for the order of worship. That cover is covering up a mandala that I started that was not coming together. I have too much going on this week to wrestle with it, so I added a more relevant layer.

I used some modeling paste on the left hand page and played around with different ways of coloring it. I used part of this Vogue pattern in the background of the community mandala and added it here. It interacted interestingly with the modeling paste. I think in the future I would layer tissue first and then modeling paste, but I do like them together. You may also notice I got a new White Sharpie! I’m working on using black and white for contrast in my pages.

I hope you have a beautiful day.

Variety of Art Completed (mostly)

Tags

acrylic paint, acrylic paints, art, art journal, Art Journal Every Day, collage, gratitude, gratitude journal, layers, mail art

I have been working on a complicated gratitude journal page layout and I just finished it. These pages have been quite a process, like a lot of the art I have been making lately. I will post pictures of the pages in process and some mail art that I’m working on and haven’t yet completed.

completed page layout

This has a few layers of paint and paper. The left hand page represents a lot of love and sadness the week following the election. The right hand page has a lot of mail related ephemera. Some of it is my gratitude for our ability to pay our bills. Some of it is my love for getting and sending snail mail. Some of the stamps and postmarks are important in my life. In any case there is a lot of gratitude, but I wanted it to look prettier.

So I added some more paint. The left hand portrait is of my younger son who had a difficult week. The white on the right side was following up with the “whitewashing” idea from my process painting and some ideas I have for art with a complex yet subtle background. I am practicing some more with the mail art project that you will see momentarily. I did some journaling on the white with colored pencils, but it isn’t very visible. Even less so when I put the mandala on it.

mail art step 1

Mail art step 2 – I let the under-painting dry completely for this one.

I put a mandala on it. I plan to cut this into pieces to make a mail art series.

I hope you have a beautiful day.

Process Painting #4: Betrayal

Tags

acrylic paint, acrylic paints, betrayal, painting, patterns, Process Painting, vulnerability

A lot of layers in this painting. The visible part is a “whitewash” I put over the dark layers of betrayal. On top of that I put new patterns that are the result of betrayal and a lot of circles because I love circles and to indicate the cycles of life including trust and betrayal. The large purple circle in the center represents being vulnerable and the outer circles embrace that vulnerability in the hopes of developing compassion for self and others.

Today I’m starting a very different kind of painting class that will be focused on techniques. I’m excited! I also have a bunch of gratitude journal entries to post. I hope to get caught up this week.

Process Painting #3: Love

Tags

acrylic paint, acrylic paints, colors, painting, Process Painting, reflections

Of course I love color, the other meanings are for you to discover on your own. I hope you have a beautiful day.

Playing with Purple: Create challenge day 6

Tags

acrylic paints, art journal, gratitude, gratitude journal, purple

Hey this creating every day thing was kind of challenging today. I’m trying to find my favorite shade/medium for purple flowers. It is not acrylics. If anyone has recommendations for books, courses, DVDs on using acrylics I would love some suggestions. Anyway. This is my page for today. I actually have a few pages of watercolor paper covered with smears and marks of purple that may show up in the days to come. I also tried hot-press water color paper for the first time. I. LOVE. IT.
Well, this was interesting to create in any case. Have a beautiful day.

The source for this challenge is http://whimsyandzen.blogspot.com/