Category:

Circle of Inspiration

4/9/2014

The Exploring Acrylics Classes are inspiring my students and me! My knowledge about acrylics expands each time I prepare to teach a class. Their knowledge expands during class as they express themselves quickly and spontaneously to become familiar with the distinctive qualities of the materials.

Another bonus for me is that by having to provide an uncluttered horizontal surface for my students to do their amazing work on, means that I have more space to paint too! Above are some the paintings I've done as we experiment with a variety of acrylic gels.

It is fun to show my students some of the ways I have used the various gels in previous work I have done. Some of the recent examples included crackle paste as well as gels, which inspired my students to request that I teach another series of classes on acrylic pastes! Hooray, my favorites!

We have one more class in the gel series next week. I'm excited to continue the circle of inspiration!

For the Love of Art & Artists

3/22/2013

Making art and visiting artists bring me great joy! Even though my tax preparer mistakenly called art my hobby, it is indeed my most consuming occupation. Even if I'm not making it, I am concerned with it in some way. There are only two priorities ahead of it; God and family.

"Release" 15 x 30, 2013

On a day that was quite disappointing and frustrating, I relieved my anxiety by painting the explosive, highly textured piece above. I released my blue feelings by smearing ultramarine blue and clear granular gel roughly with palette knives. Then with great abandon I splattered inks of gold, greens, yellow, metallic pink & dioxizine purple. Afterwards I dashed them about with more palette knife action. The result is beautiful; evoking the glittering mysteries of the night sky and the origins of the universe.

In the piece below I created a puzzle for myself by revisiting a canvas that already had some paint and pumice gel on it. I added crackle paste and lava gel with no clear thought as to what it would become. More gels and distinctive brushstrokes are bound to come but I can definitely see a water dream emerging.

current project in the Dreams of Water series

On Wednesday I had the great pleasure of visiting an artist I met recently during a class we took downtown. The class explored techniques & recipes to make acrylic appear as wax or encaustic.

I spent a delightful afternoon with Barbara Carter, asking questions about her process and discussing art and food and culture. That evening she joined me at the Burbank Art Association meeting to watch a demo by Pamela Smith Hudson about actual encaustic painting with wax. Even though it was fascinating, we both agreed that we would probably stick with acrylics.

It is always a pleasure to attend the Burbank Art Association meetings. Because I am the president, I know almost everyone, and I attempt to speak to each person. Although I may not always succeed, I do get the benefit of being well hugged by the time I leave! It is a special treasure to have the opportunity to know so many wonderful and talented local artists.

Gathering Sacred Art for the NoHo Market

Speaking of artistic community, tomorrow I head back to the NoHo Market/Artist Village with a different selection of artwork. As Easter is next week, I decided to show some of my faith inspired pieces. It is so fun to look at the work together and consider the different points of view that have been brought to my attention lately.

Be sure that I will take some weights this time, and tilt my display wall back more. Hopefully everything will remain where I put it unless it goes home with a happy collector!!

Art is Good Medicine

8/4/2012

"By His Stripes" 16 x 12

The majority of this week I've been healing from some disagreeable flu type ailment. I started the piece above before that process began.

First it was solid blue then yellow with a bit of sludge green. Strings of tar gel followed and then drips of red, blue, and purple acrylic ink. After it dried, I found it completely fascinating no matter what direction I turned it. I toyed with the idea of allowing it to be viewed in any direction, and contemplated how I would sign it and rig it for hanging.

However, after a few days of healing, I decided to stabilize the piece by filling in a heart shape found in the middlish with gold acrylic ink.

"Living Water" 16 x 12

Before I added the gold heart, I worked on the painting above which started as a swirly heart scooped out of molding paste and has been lounging around for several weeks with just the greenish blue heart and a purply background.

The first day I felt better, I added yellow orange azo and napanthol red around the heart with blues of Manganese and Ultramarine along the bottom. I finished it off with a little iridescent pearl in the heart outline and along the top of the wave. It has become my current favorite painting!

In process with crackle paste and acrylic inks on 18 x 24 gessoboard

I started this one Thursday night by slathering on crackle paste and then scraping out a multitude of hearts. It seemed to be crying out for color and so, without letting it dry for even half an hour, I started dropping acrylic inks commencing with red.

The red spread pretty nicely, then I added gold that just stayed in dots. Next pthalo blue and dioxizine purple both of which looked like shades of black. So I sprayed on water to make the colors run.

There were great puddles of water forming so I dabbed at it with a paper towel and rolled colors around by inclining the painting and turning it. Then I threw on some more gold splatters for good measure. I was concerned that I had added too much paint and cracks wouldn't form... Not to fear the cracks keep coming!

By Monday the crackle paste should be completely dry and hopefully I will be completely well. I'll add a gel of some sort to make the painting look glossy like it did when it was wet.

I'm so thankful to have my studio set up in the living room which made it easy to paint as I felt able, and painting helped me feel better. Grace abounds!

Hands On

5/26/2012

This is a painting I've been working on this week. The whitish color at the bottom of the painting is soft gel and will become clear when it is fully dried. It got smeared along the bottom as the carrier for the little scraps and bits of dried palette paint such as the red dots.

Initially the piece looked like the picture below that I showed in an earlier post when talking about crackle paste.

Apparently I felt the need to get physical with this painting and so after I sprayed the surface with water, then brushed on some dioxizine purple and mars black, I ended up giving it a good massage! This method of application didn't make any especially exciting passages but for some unknown reason I just needed to knead it.

After it dried, I dry brushed some Titanium White over the upper half and used a palette knife to smear on some variety of yellow. Some other stuff happened in the middle and more dioxizine purple was applied via my fingers. This piece has been very hands on!

I'm not sure if it is done yet, although it makes me think of the solar eclipse we experienced this week even though I didn't see it in person, mostly heard tales and saw a few photos on facebook. Maybe it is showing up in my artwork unconsciously. We'll see if anything else happens to it this coming week...

Cracked Up

3/24/2012

Crackle Paste is one of my favorite mediums with which to experiment. It can be applied thick or thin, and how it will crack is always a surprise. I've had some interesting results so I thought I would share some with you.

I've had some spectacular failures, some by not reading the label. For one thing it can only be mixed with paint 10 parts crackle paste to 1 part paint. Otherwise the paint stabilizes the paste and it doesn't crack at all or at least not much as shown in the two paintings below.

Another thing I found out is that it has to be applied over a gessoed surface. I tried applying it to an ungessoed board and after the crackle paste dried the pieces started popping off. I let pop off as many pieces as would easily fall and then thickly gessoed over what was left with a blue colored gesso and then painted over it. I also reattached some of the pieces to create the heart outline. This one is called "Rebuilding."

I used some of the popped off pieces on another painting called "Flower for Hernando."

Another thing I've learned the hard way is that crackle paste is kind of fragile when it is built up.
It always needs to be sealed in some way such as with matte medium, or gloss medium or gels. Paint is not enough.
The two paintings to the right are highly textured and only painted over. Unfortunately some little pieces have been bumped and broken to reveal the brilliant white underneath.
I don't have any pictures of that but below are some details of the crackle textures.

For the Vein of Gold

Stirred Up

I have had some paintings turn out successfully from the start...

To some I add more product as shown in the first two images pictured below which are actually the same painting. To some I subtract, on the third painting I peeled paint away.

Sometimes I enjoy the crackling so much I don't know what else to do with it!

The piece below is my most recent experiment. It is on 24 x 18 gessoboard which I painted over with black gesso. I added a little sludge green and black to the crackle paste so that it would have some color. I added some scratches at the bottom to see what that would do to the crackling but it didn't seem to effect it at all so I may cover them with more or different product.

Circle of Inspiration

For the Love of Art & Artists

Art is Good Medicine

Hands On

Cracked Up

Affirmative Blog

by Lisa Plemmons
Harrison Caddel

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Circle of Inspiration

For the Love of Art & Artists

Art is Good Medicine

Hands On

Cracked Up

Affirmative Blog

by Lisa Plemmons Harrison Caddel

Subscribe

Archives

Categories

by Lisa Plemmons
Harrison Caddel