Category: Acrylic

Day 730 – Happy Birthday Blog!!! 

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Happy Birthday Blog!!! Caran d’ache neocolor II on Kilimanjaro 5×7″

Absolutely THRILLED to say  TWO years of posting daily. I started out just trying to post daily for 50 days. I think I made it!! 😊👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Start of an Abstract iii 26×40 Arches 280# elephant sheet 

Have a couple of watercolors ready to paint. I really need to get with it but …..

So what else is up???  Plotting a trip to somewhere -probably France or China. 

Travelzoo had some great deals. $1800 for 14 days in China including air fare may be hard to pass up.

But then there’s a seven day deal in France 4-5 days in Paris, museum passes hop on hop off bus, then off to the French country side around Dijon driving ourselves. Thinking that could be an adventure to remember. 

Raisin full sheet watercolor Fabriano Hot Press just started 
And thinking about  a repeat of the Paris – Normandy Viking Cruise. You say why?! So I can draw Paris, Vernon, Auvers, Normandy and Rouen without being hustled everywhere nonstop while being pampered on the ship. Not bad. 

Never touching a suitcase has its appeals. 

It’s running $1900 including airfare. The southern leg thru Provence is also dirt cheap now. 

So many possibilities. Which will it be. In the meantime heading to the mountains and Key West while we decide. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret dreaming of foreign lands instead of painting. Xxx

Day 726 – Almost two years. 

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My Van Gogh Sunflowers 20×24 Acrylic For Sale 
Coming up on two years of daily posting on Day 730 or at least attempting to do that. 

One of the things I learned this year – if you are taking a Viking cruise up the Seine River the wifi is definitely UNdependable. Have to think about a cure for that next time we go. 
My friends and fellow artists say they have seen a lot of growth since I started this journey. I started out to do a month then 50 days then 90. It grew like topsy. 


Auvers sur L’Oise – Prints available Watercolor 8 x 11″ approximately 

I love Van Gogh. Ever since the Viking Cruise and a tour of Auvers where he died I have been thinking about painting sunflowers because I knew I could never afford a real Van Gogh. I had to paint my own another that mine is in his league!! 
This week was the week. I bought a bunch of sunflowers at Krogers and Costco to paint in my blue Shishir pot from Tire City Potters in Augusta.  

Colors used – Pthalo blue, cerulean, ultramarine blue, golden Green Gold and nickel Azo gold, hookers Green, cad yellow medium, cad yellow light, cad red light, burnt umber, titanium white. 
I had a lot of trouble with the yellows. They tend to be transparent which did not work well over the turquoise background. I finally found a tune of Golden Primary Yellow that I drew petals on straight out of the tube. The impasto ( thick) paint finally did the trick. 

Day 725 Saturday. 

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Marking her up as a WIP. Her profile definitely needs some work but I like the odd colors she’s painted especially the Thalo blue and the golden green gold. A bit of liquitex cad red light, liquitex flesh and titanium white. The background is golden nickel Azo gold and green gold over em white gesso. 

Al Beyers oil

Ilanias

Cathe Dennis charcoal 

Lee Ringler pigma micron  pen 

Ruth Oearls beautiful pastel  


Tom Needhams watercolor


Fred Bakers fun acrylic 

Day 723 -WIP –  Three hours of work so far

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This is  HUGE 28×48 Acrylic.   I have only worked on it about three  hours this includes drawing the photo to paint it. 

I have a few glaring problems which I need to fix before going on. I have made her face and body much too wide. The shadows are nonexistent on her body on the left. 

She’s a friend and I intend to fix that. I would fix it even if she weren’t because I would rather make people thinner than they are.  

I had intended to paint this but all my friends said paint the next photo because the light is better which is true. I really love her boots. If you know her she wears boots most of the time since she rides horses. 

Only problem is that I had already drawn this to do a full sheet watercolor too. It took hours and hours to draw it and LOTS of erasing. 

 Even in this one the face appears a little wide. Possibly due to the lack of shadows?! 3/4 views are always a pain. 

So I guess I will do two since this one took most of the day to draw. 

I do think it’s interesting that it was so much easier to draw the second time out. Practice makes perfect right?!!

One last thing. A lot of times I will change the photo to black and white to paint from so if I want to I can give her a red shirt and a purple jacket. I do like the blues better but getting comments it’s TOO pretty. 

Sigh! You just can’t make everyone happy can you?! 😋

Colors used so far Golden Quin Nickel Azo Gold, Thalo Blue and Ultramarine Blue ( great for denim), Liquitex Burnt Umber and Titanium white plus a tube of Winsor Purple. 

Day 719 – Saturday 

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Already again.  


Ilania 20×24 acrylic 

This only took about an hour to paint. Somehow the thinned nickel Azo gold prepainted background really helped getting her done. 


After the first forty minutes. 

Of course after I started looking at her on my phoneI thought maybe I should have painted the drape she was sitting on. Her left arm looks chopped off. It’s really behind the chair she sat on. And her right arm though it looks great is suspended in space. So hmm.  What do you think?!  
She was painted with Winsor violet, liquitex burnt umber and titanium white, and golden fluid pyrrole red and nickel Azo gold. 


Al Beyers lovely large oil. Anout 4 feet long. The hand is just amazing. Remember these were all painted in about an hour and a half. 

Drew Murphys acrylic. Some lovely skin tones. Cezanne looking today. Great effect. 


Cathe Dennis from Lansing, Michigan’s pastel. She even knows where Diamondale is. My daughter in laws family lives there. Love her scribbles. For some reason  it reminds me of Toulouse Lautrec. 

Ruth Pearls awesome large pastel. 

Tom Needhams El Greco he always does beautiful skin tones. 


Fred Baker with his always interesting sense of color. 

Thanks for checking by. 

Margaret xxx

Day 716 – While digging 

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For collage papers I also found my citrasolve altered papers. I have a two inch stack of them.

Multimedia collage with citrasolv papers, ginkgo leaves, tissue paper and tuna fish pak cardboard from Krogers. 
It’s a great way to make altered “antique” photos for framing or for collage or any thing else you can dream up. Art on a Budget.  

 

So I am posting some of my favorites I made 3-4 years ago. 

They are made from old National Geographics the only magazine that can be used for this.  

Use the straight UNDILUTED citrasolv CONCENTRATE.  Also rubber gloves and a sunny NOT WINDY day is required. More detailed directions are here. 

Mine is from Jerrysartarama. I have quart. Let me know if u need some if u live in the Augusta area. 

Put some citrasolv in a shaker container like a pill bottle with holes punched in the lid. 

Flipping thru the National Geographic sprinkle some citrasolv on all the pages but the ads. It doesn’t work well on them. The papers different. 

Close the book and let the citrasolv sit til the ink starts moving. 

Maybe ten – twenty minutes. Yes you can peek. 

When the ink is moving open the book. 

Start ripping the pages out one at a time and lay them out flat and separately. No stacking no overlapping. The spine will come apart easily. 

Lay them on the grass to dry in the sun. You will have a lot of pages.  Don’t let them blow away. 

They take a while to loose the citrasolv smell. 

This is a copy of one I liked a lot. 

You can make copies so that you can keep your favorites. 

Then you can use them over and over. 

Bytw you can buy National Geographics for .50 at our Salvation Army of you don’t have a friend that will give you stacks of their old ones. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx 

 

Day 715 – the Abstract

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Been working on this today adding the collage bits. I used paper that I painted a few years back. If I had used scrap book paper it wouldn’t be eligible for a lot of watercolor shows. 


Here it is before I added the collage bits. Can you find them?!

Black and gold with  golden silver or possible golden stainless 

These papers are oh so easy to make and I have a large stack of them.  

You paint a blobby line of acrylic paint across the top of a piece of printer paper and scrape it down with an old credit card. Let it dry.

 
Nickel Azo gold with dioxzine purple

Then you repeat with another color. Scrape it down with a credit card. 

Spray it with water BEFORE IT DRIES. LET IT DRY and scrape it again. It will peel off paint leaving the splatters from the spray. 

Golden stainless nickel Azo gold then golden silver 

Thalo? Green and copper

Not sure but the base coat is nickel Azo gold with a golden silver top coat. Not sure what the second layer is. You can do three layers. 

Nickel Azo gold with  golden silver 

Nickel Azo gold with golden silver and a third color 

Turquoise with golden silver 

Quin magenta I think with dioxzine purple
Opalescent light green with copper I think. 


I also added pieces of old painted deli wrap paper. 


Like you get Hardee’s biscuits in without printing on it. 


You paint scrape and stamp them yourself. 



Or stencil them. 

Most of them are painted with golden pearlescent and opalescent paints with liquitex solids. 
A painted and stamped Ruby Tuesdays napkin


And there’s always those paper towels you wipe your paint brushes with. 

Since they are all glued down with gel medium it doesn’t matter that they are not archival. They become plasticized   with the medium. 

Thanks for checking by. 

Margaret xxx

Day 712 – It’s Saturday 

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 Been a while since I posted one of these. Been out of town I think for the last two months or sick so haven’t been going to life modeling. 

And did I say rusty?! What happens when you don’t paint regularly. She looked good when I painted her. Not so sure now. Oh well there’s always gesso!! 


Or maybe she needs a good crop?! That’s one good thing about painting on hardboard you can crop it with a table saw. 

Thought I would share some of the other paintings done today. All but the watercolor are at least 24×30. 

This is Drew Murphy’s acrylic, my favorite one today I think. Really like his colors. Drew recently won a blue ribbon for best Abstract at the Aiken Art Guild juried show. 


Al Beyers’ oil hard to top Al but I think Drew did today. Al is a professor at USC Aiken and currently part of a faculty show at Aiken Center for the Arts. 

Tom Needhams watercolor. Tom teaches watercolor at the Gertrude Herbeet Institute of Art in Augusta. 


Fred’s acrylic. His Mondigliani. Love the orange background. He was just to my left 4 feet. And what a difference that made in the view. 

Interesting how different Ilania looks from different angles. 
Thanks for reading. 
Margaret xxx

Day 645 – Ranunculus

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Ranunculus 16×20 Acrylic FOR SALE  Also finished Tuesday. 

Recently bought some gorgeous white ranunculus at Costco and had to hurry up and paint them before they died. They started dropping and dripping petals the morning after I finished them. 

Colors used artist grade Golden and Liquitex Cerulean,Titanium white, Dioxzine Purple, Cobalt, Cad Yellow light, alizarin.  

TIP : Artist grade paints are important. Been reading a book about acrylic paints. Student grade can have styrene and other plastics than the polymer that is used in artist grade. What does that mean. The plastic can shatter!! 👀 Like an old plastic toy left in the yard it will shatter. 

  

Artist grade paint does not. 

Some interesting ranunculus trivia from Wikipedia. They are all toxic including the common buttercup.  “When Ranunculus plants are handled, naturally occurring ranunculin is broken down to form protoanemonin, which is known to cause contact dermatitis in humans and care should therefore be exercised in extensive handling of the plants.[6] The toxins are degraded by drying, so hay containing dried buttercups is safe.”

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx