Monday, March 5, 2012

Social Networking, Put a Bird On It, series

Sometimes we need to find challenges to keep our art fresh. I have been painting so many women in my series,  Women I Might Have Known I thought I needed to take a small break and play with another subject, birds. I filmed in the right hand and painted with the left- so much for my film credentials.


This is a good example of creating a random painterly base with a variety of colors and stamping techniques. Although I did not set out with bird placement in mind, I had been painting birds and found myself looking for bird shapes and patterns. I also intended this to be large - something I never do. I used a similar method as in the Peach demo, of carving the bird shapes from the underpainting when applying the background.

Susan's discoveries:
  • It's good to change up your subjects and methods. In this case birds and new sizes.
  • If you plan in advance, the surface paint should be a compliment to the underpainting. In this case a rich wash of Quinnacridone Burnt Orange made a great surface to show through my sky. I mixed Quinnacridone gold with white and lots of matte medium for transparency, blending into  Liquitex blue-violet, white and matte medium.
  • I used a stamp I carved on some of the surfaces and birds, discovering it made great abstract bark markings.
Happy painting.



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