Thou Shall Live A Creative Life.: Re-Visiting An Unfinished Artwork....

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Re-Visiting An Unfinished Artwork....

I had played with a couple of ideas back in the winter and somehow forgot about those early beginnings until this past weekend. Perhaps my renewed interest in going back to that little creative 'orphan' was sparked by my re-visiting of the book I've mentioned before 'Rethinking Acrylic' by Patty Brady. I opened this creative goldmine of endless ideas at random and I was immediately hooked on a clever and simple Resist project, namely, using Clear Tar Gel as a 'resisting' element of the painting. I've been having lots of fun with exploring the unlimited realm of color and texture from yet another perspective and in the process I completed my unfinished mixed media painting.

It seems to me that this beautiful word, in this particular instant denoting a term, Resist, have acquired a slightly negative, borderline neutral, emotional connotation in English language... And yet, a Resist technique, one of countless already utilized by artists from 'all walks of mediums', can bestow unexpected freshens upon an artwork, an interesting and integral part of the composition that would be otherwise difficult to express, was it not for the dear, old Resist.... Since the very first time I've heard of this strong-sounding word as referred to an art technique I felt a very palpable attraction to using it more often in my meandering explorations and spread the word in hopes of finding more life-long fans of this enchanting creative play ~ seek-and-hide ~ in art making.

Back in March I applied an oval-shaped layer of Crackle Paste to a canvas board....

Next, I lined up and prepared a mixture of Acrylic Glaze (Satin) containing Interference Red Oxide, Quinacridone/ Nickel Azo Gold, and Raw Umber....

.... and later applied it to the entire surface of the canvas board.

I applied a thined-down layer of Golden Cobalt Teal to the canvas by using a palette knife.

I applied a thin layer of Glass Bead gel in selected areas and let it dry overnight.

I indulged myself with more smaller and larger lid impressions against the surface. I used over a dozen random paint colors and make numerous impressions of varied colors one on top of another.

Here comes the Resist - I dripped Clear Tar Gel off my palette knife all over the surface and let it dry.

Later in the process I painted the surface with somewhat thinned down acrylic paints such as Golden Liquid Acrylics Iridescent Bright Gold (Fine), Viridian Green Hue, Paynes Gray, and Van Dyke Brown Hue.

Here's a close-up of the brush strokes, I tried to wipe the excess paint in order to bring the Resist areas to the font. You can notice the irregular shapes of the initial application of Clear Tar Gel to the top right of the brush, gently covered by tiny layers of color.

I'm still pondering over a title for my painting.....

Its dimensions are 11''x14'' canvas board.

I'd love to learn about your experiences with Resists...... any fun, unexpected tricks you'd like to share?

P.S.

I found out this afternoon that my 4-collage series titled '150 N. Vintage Ave.' has been accepted into a juried exhibition @ 'Learning Product Expo 2009'. You can see the journey from birth to completion of my collage series in the following posts: May 17 & May 18.