Bold & Beautiful...

That's what comes to my mind when I look at my work-in-progress 'Cre8 Art' ~ bold, semi-loud color theme with underlying tapestry of pasted together comics. I subdued the comics' imagery with some smudging of black and white gesso washes. That entire piece is a good example of why 'art making instruction' is an oxymoron of an expression.... I went back and forth between different paint color applications so many times that my camera's memory stick is almost full!... and that does not include gel and varnish layers. Just as I thought the piece was finally completed and varnish had dried ~ turns out ~ more is to be added to this one.

At this point I'm waiting for DickBlick to finaaaaly have in stock Self-Leveling Gel that will be applied to the entire piece. Golden Paints is the only manufacturer of this Divine product and I haven't found any other brand coming close with the properties of a substitute one. As an alternative, a Clear Tar Gel could be a resigned alternative if..... you're looking for exceptional clarity. However it's lacking in self-leveling properties, as it is meant to add some subtle texture. So, I'm hanging on to the shreds of my patience for now and...

... in the meantime I have moved on to my 'table top' mandala I have mentioned in the previous post. So far, the creation of my mandala has been reminiscent of cake decorating ~ this quick refresher of my baking skills may come handy in two weeks when I'm bound to throw two Birthday Parties, two days in a row! One for a four-year-old and, the next day, for a thirty-six-year-young one....

Going back to my project, I used an empty plastic container from that'd held feta cheese and worked its shape into a 1/3'' thick layer of Golden Extra Heavy Gel (Gloss) and, unaccounted for number of, liquid and heavy body acrylic colors mixture. Due to the tropical levels of humidity in the static air of Chicagoland my artwork has at least one more day of drying time ahead of itself....

Let's begin with 'Cre8 Art' ~ you can see the beginning of that piece in my posts from 5/28/2009 & 06/03/2009

'Smudging' black gesso wash all over the surface.

Toning down lettering with diluted black gesso....

First I painted selected letters (A, R, T) with Golden Liquid Acrylics Naples Yellow Hue, followed by a layer of Payness Gray on C & E. By the way, those two colors + Pyrrole Red are my 'IT' colors of the moment. I'm not planning on over-using them.... just admiring.... the interplay of depth and solidity, contrast and harmony.... stunning!

Here's the reason for Pyrrole Red. The '8', as in the pronunciation of 'ate' at the end of ~ CRE-ATE'. Please know that it may seem and sound quiet obvious to you, but I did some 'clinical trials' and some 'one' thought the Eight looked more like 'two con-joined circles' than a number 8. Just making sure I'm not the only one inspired by 'word-games' here.... moving swiftly along to ....

.... more Naples Yellow Hue applied on letters.....

I thought more water-diluted gesso applied sporadically with a make-up sponge wedge in selected areas may be what the piece needed at the moment.

.... where, oh, where is my self-leveling gel???? You... (SLG).... complete me....

Couple shots of my mandala making adventures:

At this 'point in the game' my mandala may seem like a cutting board awaiting some culinary acrobatics, but NO! Here comes Extra Heavy Gel (Gloss) acting as a defining agent in this, yet unknown, creative feast....

A helping of frosting, anyone???

Any creative associations to..... whatever it looks like? Maybe a shrink would like to use this image in one of those infamous 'free association' cards? Wondering.... what would it say about my 'acrylic frosting'???

There's something veeery playful, spontaneous, freeing, FUN, creative, expressive.... about this quiet tangible inter-play of color, gel, palette knife and my hand. I love it. I encourage you to try it out ~ this process is completely mistake-free from the left-brain perspective, hence its inherent fun of creative self-expression...

Working my cheese container into the gel-paint mixture in a somewhat random manner.

I used a small, chisel-shaped color shaper to remove left-over layers, so I could 'get down to the bottom' of my mandala. The black gesso background accentuates and brings the shapes up to life. To be continued....