Freaky Friday

Ok, now let's just face it, sometimes paintings cannot be revived, renovated, or remixed in any way! One just has to start fresh! So, as a result...this painting will not be completed or even be considered for completion.

Now it's time to start fresh again. Here is a brand new canvas. I'm out of "acrylic flow release" medium... I'm off to my favourite art supplier. The art shop did not have any of the "flow release". Plan be...I have some "airbrush medium" so I will try it.

So this is stage one...now wait to dry......in the meantime, I'm starring at the "no hope" painting and I just have to give it the old "college" try. Plus I really hate to be a failure without pushing the limits. So I outlined the light areas with soft chalk pastels and started applying some acrylics into areas that needed a deep red. Before continuing, I am deciding with a cup of tea....what to do next...

I will keep you posted!

Until next time...happy creating 

Nadine 

Feeling a Little "Drippy"

We've had a stretch of sunny/cloudy days, but I look at the forecast for the next week....and you guessed it - Rain. Well I don't feel like puddle jumping like a couple of wee ones love to do, but I do love drips in my creative process.

Once again, I took an old painting that wasn't inspiring me anymore and got out some acrylics. I don't really have a concrete idea of where this painting should go, but I will use my intuition to guide me.

First stage..... I see a landscape emerging.... I'm going to push this piece a lot further because I have nothing to lose!

Final stage, maybe, maybe not....

I used a thicker acrylic and the paint really blended and soaked into the canvas, as a result the colours flooded together making the piece too dark. So while the paint was still wet I used a straw and blew the some of the paint to reveal the lighter colours underneath. I'm going to wait until this is completely dry before proceeding.

It has stopped raining now so I will go on a lovely walk.

Until next time...happy creating
Nadine

Another Travel Day

I'm returning home to Victoria after spending a wonderful few days, jammed packed mind you days. Exhausted but happy to be "home"!

Thanks for your patience - I promise I will have something new and creative for the next post.

Until next time....happy creating

Nadine 

Travel Day

We are off to Vancouver today, visiting friends and family. Instead of creating a piece, I visited the Vancouver Art Gallery to enjoy others in their creative journey.

The major show was "Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven. A wonderful exhibition especially when I had Cathy to enjoy and appreciate these fine works.

Until next time...happy creating 

Nadine 

Loving Victoria! Spring is in the Air!!

That's right, spring is just around the corner here in Victoria. I've seen some of the early blossoms on cherry trees (sorry I don't know the name of this tree variety), primulas are blooming and just the other day walking down Fort Street, the florist had bunches of locally grown daffodils out! What, this is insane and I'm loving it, 9 degrees celsius  today! I know it's mid January....so for the non believers here is a photo.

I was so inspired by the thought of spring bulbs popping up everywhere I just had to create a couple of acrylic impressionistic paintings (10"x19.5").

Until next time...happy creating

Nadine

Photo Mania!

One of my "new year's" projects is to clean up all the albums, hard copies and digital photographs that we have. No mean feat!

I can't believe how many photographs of family, friends, landscapes, florals, paintings, artworks, ideas, magazine articles and meaningless.....!!! that I currently have. I moved to BC over five years ago, I thought I did a major clean up then....but now, with technology, the photo library has exploded totally out of control. My IPhone, IPad and IMac all talk to each other and I have streaming, collections, faces, places, events....and the list goes on. I have to get a handle on this.

So, I've spent the last 5 days going through our "hard copy" albums (2 bins worth) and eliminating those that I never will look at again or are even remotely interested in painting or using in any art/creative process. I'm sure I could regret this decision one day...but really, if I need a photo of a field of "green" I'm sure I can locate an image somewhere to take, another photo of!

I've also started cleaning up the IMac, and hopefully this will also take care of precious gigabyte
space on my other two devices.

Wish me luck...this could take all year!

In the meantime, I'm sure I will be photographing all and every interesting idea, person, place or thing!!!

Until next time...happy creating

Nadine

Back to Acrylics

Another one of my ideas was to rework some older paintings and turn them into "new" paintings. Out comes the gesso and just like magic the older painting has vanished!

I'm really liking the soft background and suggests a field of wildflowers to me. The canvas is only 10" x 19.5" so I wanted to keep the subject matter simple!

Until next time.....happy creating

Nadine

Resist Control

Under a week in this brand new year and I've got a million ideas to try out - some ideas are new and some are old ones that remind us all that we need to "play" more.

So, the first idea is one I've use in the past and it's good for loosening up and getting re-acquainted with your inner child. I'm using watercolours with rubber cement resist and coarse salt.

In this demonstration, I took a few not so successful watercolours and used the back to randomly drip and drag rubber cement. Wherever the rubber cement lies will remain white. Next, let dry completely and apply lots of clean water and when the paper has absorbed the water, start applying some fun colours. If you want more texture, now is the time to sprinkle some coarse salt. Let dry completely.

Here is the result: I apologize for the poor quality of these photos.

After the paper is completely dry, brush off the salt and you may or may not remove the rubber cement. If you leave the rubber cement, take a look at the piece and decide....where do I go from here? Now you are ready to enhance the colours, the form, remove or even add more rubber cement.

I wasn't happy with the two colours yellow and magneta creating the beige/brown so I added some fluid acrylic orange...once again wait until completely dry, then I continued to remove the rubber cement. The possibilities are endless.

Final piece....(may or may not be...we shall see), it doesn't always work out to be a masterpiece but it's fun to just be free and play with new and old materials. Have fun with this method of losing control with a little "resistance".

This close up shows how the salt reacts with the wet paint and the pure white lines left by the rubber cement once removed. Hint - use fresh rubber cement not a jar that has been lying around for 10 years....it's harder to remove and goes on thicker.

Until next time....happy creating

Nadine