Painting: Rose

This painting is another one based on a photo from my America trip last year.

Portland's International Rose Garden has approximately 550 varieties of rose plant so there were plenty to take photos of during our vist. It's free to look around and you can get there on the shuttle bus that takes you all around Washington Park, which we were visiting for the zoo but the rose garden was an added bonus.

This painting is a small one and I decided to use acrylic paints as a change from my usual oils.

Thanks Portland for your inspiration and photo posing opportunities!

Painted Baubles

I started painting baubles when I was at uni and every couple of years I add a new bunch to my stock. They're a good item to have on my craft stalls as they draw people's attention. They usually can't believe that I painted them.

I usually work on at lest two baubles at a time so a layer of paint can be drying on one while I work on the other. I pop on a podcast (usually This American Life) and flick between the internet tabs I have open of images found by googling something like 'winter scene'.

I use acrylic paint on plastic baubles. I've found matt, silver ones are best as they're the closest to a white blank canvas, and the paint sticks better to matt plastic rather than shiny.

Painting: Trying Acrylics

I primarily use oil paints for my paintings but inspired by the students at school, who primarily use acrylics, I decided to give them a try.
It turns out they weren't as tricky to use as I'd always thought. With oil paints you can take your time and work back into parts as the paint takes days to dry, but with acrylics you have to work quicker due to the fast drying time. But a bonus of acrylics is that you can cover up something completely with a new layer of paint as the layers don't blend.

Usually I paint from my photos but this painting comes from one of my videos. This clip of my boyfriend was taken during a weekend in Brighton back in April. We stayed at the Artist Residence hotel and that place is super cool. The painting shows part of their restaurant.

I tried not to be so detailed when painting with acrylics and not blend so much like I do when using oil paint, but I kinda can't help it.

The painting is about A3 and done on canvas paper. I'm really pleased, and a little surprised with how it turned out.

Image Transfer Painting

 The other day my friend sent me a photo of a friend of hers and asked me what sort of painting she could get for a small budget. I decided I could do an image transfer with painted details.

I started wit ha small canvas board and a printed copy of the photo in reverse. I forgot about the reverse part the first time I printed it, but that then became my reference photo.

Then I coated the canvas in an acrylic gel medium, which works the same as image maker.

This is the same technique I used with this picture.

Once the medium had dried I wetted the paper to rub it off, leaving the image behind. Unfortunately this didn't work as well as it has done in the past as some of the image started to come off as well. This just meant that I'd be doing more painting than I'd originally planned.

I think I ended up painting over everything except the ears and teeth.

I had to use acrylic paint for this as I didn't know how oil paint would react with the remaining paper.It was a bit of a challenge as I'm not used to using it for painting in a realistic style but I think it turned out all right.