Sunday 15 June 2008

More shapes...

Day three and I’ve added some more detail to the background.

I spent a LONG time just looking at this today…there are some elements that I like (overall composition, sky, pose of the figure, sections of the outlines), but the general application of the paint is not yet working…it’s too like a lino cut and not enough like a painting…this is partly due to the nature of acrylic paint and my love/hate relationship with its properties(or lack of skill in using it), but mainly due to the fact that this is an experiment and I don’t know exactly where I’m going…

I need to find a way to blend the acrylics, that gives me a ‘painterly’ look, without having that ‘messy’ look that you can get from acrylics when sections are drying before you’ve had a chance to work them…the current blocks of colour are too lino cut ish….too like a cartoon…

8 comments:

Lorna said...

What size is this painting?

Unknown said...

about 20 x 20 in

Unknown said...

24 x 24 in in fact...:)

Lorna said...

The way I felt about the painting changed with the size. It has a very powerful/strong composition but now I know it is small it lessens. Hope I make sense?

Unknown said...

I know what you’re saying and this is certainly the kind of stuff I’d like to do on a larger scale…but as it was an experiment, I thought I’d make my life easier and not go too mad on the scale of this one :)

If I can get this one working I do have several boxes of large(ish) canvases to move onto :)

SueC said...

Big is always beautiful in my book :-)

SueC said...

Hmm. I think part of your problem is the black outlines you have everywhere which immediately constrain you when you are trying to blend in acrylic. You need to be fast, and to be liberal to get a good blend. Maybe forget on keeping the outlines clean for now and concentrate on the meat of the images and cut the black in afterwards? Its a technique I often use when painting petals....

Unknown said...

I know what you’re saying Sue and I think you make a very good point, the way I’ve done this works well for creating these interesting outlines, but I am then very restricted when ‘filling in’ the colours…The nice thing about the watercolours is you can freely paint over the outlines to get all the expressive colour and texture and then reveal the outlines at the end by rubbing off the masking fluid…am looking forward to tomorrow to see how things progress…:)