Swept Away

"Swept Away"

18x24x1.5" wrapped canvas
professional grade artist materials - acrylics

This is a piece from April that came together pretty quickly, which as you may have noticed doesn't always happen. I had an idea of using Turquoise Phthalo along with  Cadmuim Orange and then of course the blacks, whites and creams for creating contrast and values.  I initially went off of a rough sketch from my sketchbook journal and quickly knew it wasn't going to work as I had intended.

The biggest thing I have learned over these last few years of sketchbook/journal work is that more often than not, they simply do not translate to the canvas. Makes me wonder if it is the sketch or if it is in my color choices, or because of the way I have currently been painting. That makes me think often, am I trying two totally different processes? Probably, but that is for another day!

Back to the piece...

The initial sketch...

The first go at coverage...

Adding contrast and accent color...

This is where I knew it wasn't going to happen. Time to shift gears to what I know.

Starting with some under (painted) marks, I more or less covered the entire canvas with varying values of the turquoise phthalo and the addition of some major pops of the cadmium orange.

Once I had a good amount of marks, I started in with layers and layers of coverage using varying levels of the pigments to acrylic glazing liquids to get the limited coverage I was after.

Always taking into account what I wanted to peek through. This is often takes a few days to get to where you are seeing just the right amount of what is under the veil of continuous layers of glazing.

A finished piece is always a back forth decision for me. I tend to hang paintings in my studio near my desk where I can look at them from different angles, lighting and times of the day to decide if indeed they are done. This one has sat since April, and more times than not, I think it needs just that extra punch of orange near the bottom, but just haven't worked up the nerve to actually do it 😏. 

Maybe one day...

for now, I'll keep looking at it.

Golden Paints: Turquoise (Phthalo), Cadmium Orange, Mars Black, Titanium White, Zinc White, Titan Buff

Color Marking: Posca Pens, Molotow Pens (Empty) and filled with my color choices, NeoColorII, paint brushes with above listed paints.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.