Life Gets Busy

It is the same old story. Life gets busy and things fall by the wayside. With the end of the school year, teaching a summer program, finishing up the manuscript, and helping Dave move, I have not had much time lately. But I have started a relief painting, and wanted to share the beginnings of it. The idea grew out of the journal and could easily be adapted back into the journal.

Much of my work lately has been dealing with the layering of certain shapes and the sense of depth, overlapping, and transparencies. So I wanted to push this idea even further. By working with 22 in x 30 in heavy weight watercolor paper, I built up a very shallow relief by cutting shapes with a hobby knife and gluing the shapes down with gel medium. I then coated the whole thing with gel medium to create a consistent surface.


Trying to work with acrylic paint in a similar way as I do with watercolor pencil, I then used cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, and burnt sienna to accentuate and highlight certain areas as well as to begin laying in the bigger patterns of dark and light. I blended the paint out with matte medium to create very transparent areas.


Using burnt umber, crimson, and pthalo blue, I added more glazes of paint to bring in more contrast and to further develop the pattern of light and dark. I then used titanium white mixed with other colors to bring some highlights to certain areas, and used all the other colors to develop the forms within certain areas by mixing and blending.


I've worked on it more since this last photo was taken, but the process has slowed down as I am beginning to tighten up and develop areas. I'll keep posting progress photos.