Sunday, March 2, 2014

Acrylic Dreams...

Obviously this is from a while back.  It is approximately 3" x 3.5", watercolor and ink. The Flemish style of painting is one of my favorites, and what better way to study it than to copy a master?

Currently I am learning to use acrylics. Other than the finger painting days of kindergarten, I've never used them.  (That was acrylic, wasn't it?) They follow me to bed and infiltrate my dreams.  I even had a dream where someone was showing me some techniques.  Sometimes I cannot fall asleep as the colors and images dance around energetically, willing me to get back up and put them down on canvas.  Not such a bad thing, I think.    




11 comments:

  1. It's beautiful! I am amazed at the detail you achieve in such a small space. And I love your balance of colors and shading.
    Your writing is lovely too- so expressive.
    You are an artist through and through!

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  2. Thank you Pamo! The balance of colors and values is one of the things that attracts me to the style. And thank you for complimenting my writing. Writing is the part I sweat the most when blogging. It's that fear of not actually having anything to say!

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  3. I clicked on this expecting to see an acrylic version of GWPE ?

    Our Kindergarten was called Infants over here in my young school days. Don't know if they were acrylics, but I will always remember those jars filled with brightly coloured powder that the teacher added water to. Strangely though, I don't remember painting with it, only using pastels.

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    1. LOL...what was I thinking?! That's a horrible title! But no, haven't done any real work with acrylics yet. Just some value study type stuff. And honestly, I don't actually remember using the acrylics yet. The only painting I remember was the watercolor, which didn't work out at all for me. So until I started watercolor a few years ago, I actually did no painting. Only sketched! There were some markers in there, but those were horrible! Acrylics are so different than what I'm used to! With watercolor, the paint is sucked out of the brush; with acrylic, I feel like I have to work at getting it out. Never really thought about that before...

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  4. Acrylics stain so I am guessing they are different to the paints used in kindergarten, or there would be lots of upset parents :-)
    I love your rendition of the Girl with the Pearl Earring. Copying the masters seems like a great way of learning.

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  5. Let's see, in grade school I think we used finger paint! Or was it tempera? What is tempera?!

    Acrylics - some days I love it. Some days I hate it. I am going to try oil again. Used it years ago, didn't know what I was doing. And I'm going to try it again. There was a sidewalk sale at an art store this weekend and I bought 20 tubes for 50 cents each! They are old, yes, but I don't think oil ever goes bad. Now if I can just find the time..

    I remember you posted this woman with the pearl earring once before, yes? Your version is a cutie - looks like she's about to say something.

    Oh re the writing - I ran out of stuff to say months ago!

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  6. That's a lovely painting and nice take on the original, I especially like the background and the over all texture to the whole painting.
    All I remember from preschool, was that I ate glue... or maybe it was paint, perhaps both, and add crayons to the mix .
    But all in all I have grown up with different paints and among them acrylics I find I have a love and hate relationship with them. I like working with acrylics but I don't like how flat it dries (like oils can create beautiful texture, but I cant stand the smell) and I use sometimes different gels to make them thicker, but baby powder (the unscented kind) mixed in to it works super and its lovely to paint with. Another thing I do is let it sit for a while and it turns drier and thicker. So good seeing you posting again : )

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  7. Hi Raena.. Nice to catch up with you after very long.. Hope all's been well at your end..
    I expected an acrylic painting too when I opened up this page.. I am still too scared to look at any medium other than watercolor, or even better, plain old pen or graphite..
    But!! Good to catch up!! :)

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