ANOTHER ABSTRACT MIXED MEDIA PIECE INSPIRED BY DENISE LOVE
I’ve now completed the second abstract piece. I so enjoy following Denise Love on YouTube! She is so inspiring and enthusiastic, and I love her abstract pieces and colour choices, and how quickly she works.
Today’s piece is based on circles, which is one of Denise’s favourite themes. I’ve always loved circles too and have been inspired in the past by Kaffe Fassett’s passion for them. Gustav Klimt also used a lot of circles, and almost unintentionally – maybe subconsciously, today’s project seems to be inspired by Klimt!
I began today’s project with a series of circles painted with a fairly large round brush on watercolour paper. I deliberately made them touch on another so the colours would run. As with the previous project I used my new ArtGraf Tailor Shapes in earth colours, this time treating them like watercolour pans and picking up the colour with a wet brush. I also used a couple of colours from the Kuretake Gansai Tambi graphite watercolours. I love how they all granulate and flow into one another as I dropped in more water and further colour.
While the paint was still wet, I laid down a couple of fragments of shelf liner. Unfortunately this is a different pattern from Denise’s so it doesn’t leave such a nice impression, but it is interesting nonetheless – linear rather than a grid design.
When I used the plastic bathmat in the last project, I had forgotten that you are supposed to leave the texture maker in place until the paint is pretty much dry. I removed it straight away, so it really didn’t leave much impression at all. This time I left the shelf liner in place and went off to do something else for a while, before removing it.
Added texture from shelf liner
Here is the result. I must practise some more with the bathmat!
I noticed a few paint water splashes at the top of the piece, but later I added some mark making to incorporate these.
At this point I proceeded with a lot of mark making and forgot to take any further photos until the piece was finished!
The finished piece
Close-ups and work details
I’ll now show a series of close-up shots, and try and explain the work I did after I’d forgotten to photograph anything.
Starting at top left, I began with some stencilling. I used a small circular mandala-style stencil with thick white acrylic paint applied with a piece of spoge foam.
The fine mark making was done with Staedtler water-based fineliner markers. The rectangles and circles were drawn with Stabilo Woodies. I bought these some time ago and haven’t used them much. They are like very thick pencils with a wax crayon-type core which is also water-soluble. The gold was done with a gold Posca pen and was less bright and shiny than the Dr. Ph. Martin’s gold ink which I used in the previous project, but in the right light it has quite a shimmer. I also added touches of Arrtx acrylic markers, and some very light application of coloured pencil.
Here’s the shelf liner circle in all its glory! It’s quite an interesting patterm, to which I added some gold.
I also used a piece of punchinalla as a stencil with the same white acrlic paint, to create the circles pattern. The black circles were done with a very broad bullet-tipped Posca pen – really bold! I took this theme right across the painting diagonally and it gave it some focus.
Stencilling is an important feature in this kind of art. It adds texture and another element of shape and possibly pattern, and as you subsequently partially cover it with more layers it adds depth.
It was fun adding spirals to the larger black circles and also some bleed-proof white dots in the centres of the punchinella stencil pattern. I added dots with black and white markers and a few gold ones.
I filled in some of the white space between the large painted circles with a very light application of coloured pencil in colours to match the theme. A repeat of the circular stencil. I suggested the rest of the pattern with the fine Staedtler markers.
Circles and dots, rectangles and gold, Ã la Klimt!
Golden spirals and a randomly completed stencil
Mark making with the Arrtx acrylic markers, some freehand circles and dots around the circles, and plenty of gold spirals and dots in the background. I particularly like the way the large Posca marker circles push the other circles into the background, adding a 3-D effect.
Faint radiating lines drawn with a matte 2B graphite pencil, and also some dots.
Materials
As always when I do a group shot of the performing artists in a piece, I always forget a cast member! This time it was the Stabilo woodies. A shame really, because these chunky wooden pencils are really fun! My hubby gave me a nice wooden box to keep them in.
Video gold!
As before, a short video clip showing the gold.
