Since the books from Tuesday's blog didn’t help, the next logical step was the internet. YouTube is a great way to learn things without leaving your home. There are a lot of abstract painters using different tools and techniques; but after each attempt my results were unsuccessful. Two YouTuber’s I do recommend are Amy Pierce and Sabine Belz, they do interesting artwork but difficult to recreate.
While searching the net I came across Art Fusion Productions by Glen Farquhar; can’t forget a name like that. Art Fusion , based in Australia, has videos you can purchase with step by step instructions. Either buy a DVD and wait, or download the videos immediately. I bought and downloaded six and have been successful with three. The other three tutorials were useful for technique but no pleasing paintings came from it.
‘Blizzard’ was my favourite, with two awesome paintings now hanging in the bedrooms. Unfortunately the house paint was too diluted and starting to crack so they will have to be redone.
‘Dandelion’ is in the hall
and ‘Patchwork’ in the conservatory.
After creating these paintings I felt like they weren’t me; so having tried books and the internet, the next phase will have to be art class.
Almost two years ago with no previous experience; after
browsing through the pages of ‘All About Acrylics’ by Oliver Lohr, Kristina
Schaper & Ute Zander, I decided to paint. The dripping
technique caught my eye since Jackson Pollock paintings had always inspired me. It looked simple enough, just throw paint
onto a canvas and voila. As most of you
probably know there’s more to it than that, as I quickly found out. The paint didn’t flow as expected, the
canvas was filled with blobs of paint...not a Jackson Pollock.
With my limited knowledge, continuing to work with acrylics
seemed the right thing to do. Acrylic
paints dried easily, could be worked over and watered down or
thickened for the right consistency. So obviously, success is going to take a little more time.
My second
art book; ‘The Acrylic Artist's Bible’ by Marylin Scott was more useful technically. With information on colour mixing and a
section on techniques that was more of a how to than the theory in ‘All About
Acrylics’. The problem with both books
was there were no interesting exercises.
So the paintings below combine a lot of different styles with colours
to match rooms in my house.
Nothing
too exciting but hopefully future posts will show improvement.
So left with a ton of acrylic paint, all kinds of brushes,
pallet knives, sponges, etc.; new ideas to come.
