Tag Archives: acrylic painting on canvas

Tones of Green

I love to paint in tones of green. The painting that I did this past week in my painting class started as one painting and then it decided it wanted to be completely different. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the first layer. Fortunately the first layer is just random colors, so it is not a big problem.

I told the class that I had been painting Ireland. My intent was to not paint Ireland in this class. That was not the case, however. It had a lot of red-orange at the top and very bright yellow green at the bottom. It became more and more green until it morphed into what I think is one of my best paintings of Ireland.

painting by Ann Hart Marquis showing tones of green.

The Green, Green Grass of Home, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 x 3/4 inches. Ann Hart Marquis

As with most of my paintings I like to create layer over layer what various mark-making lines in each layer. My teacher calls me a builder. I rather like that reference. When she saw the finished painting she commented that there must be 32 different greens in it.

Due to being in this class, this painting and the one I am working on now will be in an upcoming group exhibit at a very lovely restaurant here in Albuquerque. This is a busy time in New Mexico because the weather is quite wonderful—sunny and a little cool. The exhibit will run from October 1 – December 30, 2016.

Also each October the International Hot Air Balloon Show is held here and Albuquerque is packed with tourists for at least a week. It is a good time to be in an art exhibit.

And my current painting which will also be in the exhibit is an abstract in hues of orange and magenta! It is not green. It does not remind me of Ireland. I purposely left all my greens and blues at home the day of the class. I just took reds, yellow and magenta. It seems a bit shocking to me at the moment. We will see how I finish it.

Painting from Imagination

Since I returned from Ireland I been painting from imagination. I keep looking at photos of the trip, and they are lovely, but they are not really inspiring me to use one for a subject for a painting.

I seem to be drawn to scenes, memories, senses and sensations from the trip. I see colors in my mind and I see shapes and images. Sometimes I just see layers of images that I can’t separate.

Since the trip, although my paintings are abstract landscape paintings, my first three paintings contained scenes or some shapes that were easily recognizable like a cliff or an ocean setting. This time I wanted to do something different.

Ann Hart Marquis shows Given to Exaggerated Wonder painting from imagination

Given to Exaggerated Wonder, acrylic on canvas 24x30x1.5 inches.

I usually draw very little before I paint. I didn’t draw at all on this painting. It developed by first deciding on my palette, preparing a canvas with black gesso and then when that dried, I just started letting shapes and colors come from my imagination.

I was also using Golden Open gloss medium mixed with paint which allowed me to drag one color into another before they dried to form bands of color. In other words I was painting wet-on-wet.

I started at the bottom with darker blues and greens and then worked my way to the top letting the colors become lighter as I ascended. What a fun way to paint! I just kept a vision of Ireland in my mind. The memories and feelings both consciously and unconsciously informed what I was painting.

I was painting in a new way and it felt very creative. In my next painting that I will start on Monday, I will try it again—painting from imagination.

I like this quote that I found about creativity:
“Even those of us not in explicitly creative fields must come up with new ideas and insights in order to move ahead. How can we shake up the way we think? Creativity has been pegged to conducive environments, perfect collaborators, personality traits, serendipity, and even spiritual muses. While research psychologists are interested in increasing innovative thinking, clinical psychologists sometimes encourage patients to use artistic expression as a way to confront difficult feelings.”

My Artist Muse

Yesterday I finished a painting that I had been working on for some time. So today the question was what should I paint next? I have been primarily working on medium-large canvases, 24×30-inches. It takes me about a week to finish this size painting if I get to the studio almost every day.

Today I felt some pressure to think of what I wanted to paint next. It does not work very well if I am feeling pressure when I paint. And I had no inspiration for the next painting.

So instead of starting on another large canvas that would take some planning, or at least giving some thought to an image, I followed by friend Dotty’s example to do a small format painting in a day. It actually took me less than an hour and I am happy with the results.

Ann Hart Marquis-How artist muse helped create My Mind's Desire

My Mind’s Desire, acrylic on canvas panel, 8×6-inches.

There was certainly no pressure involved. My process included finding a sample of coarse molding paste, letting it dry, having some lunch, then going back to my canvas. I then applied random paints that were in the same palette as my last painting and very loosely applying them.

So this brings me to thinking again about inspiration, motivation and the muse. By the way, I don’t think I have an artistic muse. Unless I think of the word as a verb: chew over, contemplate, excogitate, meditate, mull, mull over, ponder, reflect, ruminate, speculate, think over.

I do sometimes need to wait for inspiration. I have been thinking a lot about how I get inspired to paint a certain scene. I think that it comes down to thinking about a place I have been or perhaps looking at a photo of a place that brings forth some kind of feeling in me.

It also may involve including some sort of paint or medium that I have not used for a long time or maybe never—like coarse molding paste.

So I have been contemplating, mulling over and reflecting what I will do next. It may be a larger version of the one above. I am still pondering, but with no pressure.

Do you ever feel pressure to be creative? Do you have a muse?

Painting Series

Painting series is something I started doing about 5 years ago. It took me a long time to realize the significance of doing a series instead of random subjects that appealed to me.

Before that, in my mind I was painting series because I was painting landscapes. All different kinds of landscapes with different colors, sizes and sometimes style.

I have learned that if you make art for yourself and no one else, then you can paint whatever you want. If you make art to sell or gain the attention of collectors or galleries and you’re interested in having people appreciate and understand what you are trying to convey, it is better to let others see where your attention lies.

According to Alan Bamberger at Art Business.com, “the easiest way to do that is to work in series– to create unified, cohesive, coherent, related bodies of work. Many artists aren’t fully aware of the advantages to creating multiple works of art around the same idea, theme, philosophy, concept, topic or subject matter. Instead they produce what I call “onesies.”

Ireland study, acrylic on canvas, 8×10 inches.

I have learned that painting series is a way of exploring several different variations of an idea or theme. There are many benefits to creating a group of similar-styled artworks. Related paintings look a lot better on a website or in an exhibit rather than a mixture of different looking artworks. I did my first painting of Ireland last week and it was posted on my last post. Above is another study I just did for my second painting in the series.

However, it can also be challenging to work in a series. I started a series several months ago, sold one, painted a second and then went to Ireland which completely consumed all of my attention. I want to work on a series of Ireland. So now I have one painting that I did for a previous series that goes with nothing. I think that is the nature of creativity. Our attentions can change.

But I have made a commitment to myself to finish my Ireland series. I have never felt as strongly about a series. It will be interesting to me to see how many I will do.

Black Gesso Drama

At the beginning of last week, I had been back from Ireland for about two weeks. I was anxious to get started on a series of my experiences, but I couldn’t quite get to any concepts that called to me.

Also, right after I got back, my classes at the University of New Mexico started, including one new class involving texture and different mediums.

Black Gesso

One of the products that I wanted students to try was black gesso. I hadn’t used it for quite a while, but I thought the students would find it interesting. After demonstrating the use of black gesso, I realized that it was just what I could use to represent the enigmatic energy and mystery that I felt in Ireland as illustrated in the photograph, below.

Down Patrick Head, County Mayo, Ireland. Photo by Tim Anderson

Here is a little description of black gesso: Historically, it is for oil painting. It was traditionally used to prepare or prime a surface so oil paint would adhere to it. It is made from a combination of paint pigment, chalk, and glue binder. Gesso would protect the canvas fibers, provide a nice surface to work with and give a little flexibility so the canvas wouldn’t crack if it was rolled.

Acrylic gesso doesn’t contain glue. Acrylic paints are non-corrosive and stable over time, so you don’t need to worry about the paint damaging the canvas, and therefore, you don’t need the glue in the mix. So in making black gesso for acrylics, out went the glue.

painting showing how black gesso adds mystery to an image.

The Mystery of Time, acrylic on canvas, 24x30x1.5 inches.

I use gesso on all of my canvases before I paint. It makes the canvas ready to accept acrylic paint. Without gesso, paint can soak into the weave of the canvas.

So this past Monday I began a canvas prepared with black gesso. I wanted to use it to let it show through in random places. I liked the effect. So off I went getting a feel for how to represent the beauty and power of the Atlantic Ocean, the breathtaking cliffs and all of those shades of green that I saw. The above painting is the result-the first in a series.

I would love your critique.

Isolation Coat for Acrylic Paintings

What is an isolation coat? Traditionally, an isolation coat on a painting is a coat of some kind of gloss medium when you finish a painting. It is transparent and goes between the finished painting and the varnish. It is always a good idea to varnish a finished painting to protect it and add to its longevity.

If being archival is important to you, you can add an isolation coat. If you think that it may not be around for 100 years, you can just varnish it when it has dried completely. This is key because otherwise the varnish will stick to your painting and be a nightmare to try and remove. Varnish is not permanent, it just acts as a dust collector that you can remove and replace, every 10-20 years depending on how dusty the environment your painting is kept in.

Using an Isolation Coat Between Layers

An isolation coat can also be used between layers of paint on a surface. I used several layers of a gloss medium between layers in order to form a barrier so that the next coat of paint can allow you to let whatever you have first put on the canvas remain visible, if that is your plan.

Ann Hart Marquis- an painting describing how to use an isolation coat

A Dream for My Father, acrylic and ink on canvas, 30x30x1 inches.

The basic process is do the underpainting. I like to first add color all over my canvas, do some mark making and random colors, let dry, then lay down a thin layer of acrylic gloss medium. That’s the basic process. In that way, if I am basically creating a blue painting, but I want another color showing through, I can paint over it and leave parts of it showing. Perhaps I originally made a very dark mark and I want it to be almost invisible, I can cover it with the second coat of paint.

In this painting I did about three isolation coats somewhere on the canvas and painted over them. I like the process and the effects it gives me. I think that you can see some of the under-details for yourself.

After it dries for about 2 weeks, I will varnish it.

Golden High Flow Acrylics

This week and last week I was experimenting with Golden High Flow acrylics. High Flow is their newest acrylic paint that can go from “brush to marker or from dip pen to airbrush and more. From fine lines to broad strokes, High Flow Acrylic has an ink-like consistency that lends itself to a wide range of techniques, including staining, leveling, calligraphy, and mixed media.”

Like the painting in my previous post I started this new painting with various background colors and a little light blue house paint. I then painted some random trunks.

Next I got out the indigo blue and turquoise high flow bottles and my water spritzer. I poured a drip of high flow to the top of where I wanted the tree branches to start and immediately shot the drip with water. Like last week the paint bloomed into interesting tree like patterns.

Ann Hart Marquis-using high flow acrylics and water

Waiting for the Morning Sun, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 14 x 1.5 inches.

It was fun to use and I loved the surprises I got from adding the spritz of water. High flow paint works well as a pour. According to Golden, it is well suited for use on large areas, where the thin consistency allows for free flowing color layers.

The pigment size and intensity varies between each of the 49 colors. Unlike other acrylic paints high flow paint is not degraded by water. It retains its intense color due to their high pigment load.

They can be modified as needed with water when working on paper and other absorbent surfaces. Over thinning with water can create sensitive paint layers, especially when used on non-absorbent surfaces.

I enjoyed the spritzing process and now I want to see what I can do with washes and letting it free-float all over a canvas. Are you experimenting with anything new lately?

The Fauvists

For the last four weeks I have been painting with gray as a major component in my paintings. As one could imagine, I have grown tired of grayed down colors for now. So this week I decided to create a painting that has little or no gray.

Optimistically Tenacious, acrylic and ink on canvas, 14 x 1.5 inches.

It felt wonderful to get back to bright pure color. After I finished this painting I was reminded of my first painting teacher Carol Watanabe who considered herself a Fauve artist. Her class took place in Soréze, France and then later in Collioure, France. Here is an example of her work.

Carol Watanabe

The Fauvists

The Fauvists were French painters whose members shared the use of intense color as a vehicle for describing light and space, and who redefined pure color and form as a means of communicating the artist’s emotional state.

Fauvism was the first of the avant-garde movements that flourished in France in the early years of the twentieth century. Their spontaneous, often subjective response to nature was expressed in bold, high-keyed, vibrant colors sometimes directly from the tube.

Henri Matisse

“Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) and André Derain (French, 1880–1954) first introduced unnaturalistic color and vivid brushstrokes into their paintings in the summer of 1905, working together in the small fishing port of Collioure on the Mediterranean coast. When their paintings were exhibited later that year at the Salon d’ Automne in Paris they inspired an art critic to call them fauves (“wild beasts”).”

Although I never considered myself a fauvist, that use of bold color has stayed with me and frequently I have to force myself not to use colors that are really too intense. Graying down a color took me while to appreciate.

Acrylic Painting Fix

Sometimes when I have finished a painting there is a little annoying doubt that says “are you sure this is finished? Are you sure it needs no revision?” I recently had such an experience with a painting that I completed in the spring of last year. In the process of organizing my studio I came across this painting. I really knew it had problems when I hung it on the wall. I just didn’t want to admit it.

It is called “Patches of Paradise,” and in reviewing the piece I decided that was an appropriate title because it seemed very patchy to me. Also, the bottom half did not seem to be as integrated as the top half of the painting. And what were those trees doing in the foreground? It needed an entire acrylic painting fix.

Before applying paint to this canvas I had applied light molding paste which gives the surface a very textured terrain. My problem was that I let the terrain dictate the composition on the lower half of the painting. Not a good idea. I had also used colors that were too intense for almost all of the painting.

Original Patches of Paradise, 2014

This week I decided to tackle the painting and see if I could remedy the problem. I covered the unattractive terrain with thick paint then applied a more toned down palette to the necessary areas. I also made subtle changes to some of the upper half of the painting. I removed the trees.

Ann Hart Marquis-Patches of Paradise-acrylic painting fix

I would like feedback on my changes or any comment about the painting itself. Am I finished this time? Does it now need a name change?

Acrylic Painting on Paper

I have been experimenting lately with different painting techniques, styles and layering effects. Since one of my goals is to play, to loosen up, I decided to use watercolor paper with my acrylic paints rather than canvas.

To me canvas means being serious. It means working until I have a finished piece no matter how long it takes because I have an investment in the outcome. That is not what I want to do at this time.

Acrylic painting on paper is a wonderful combination and has a lovely look and feel. Watercolor paper has many different weights, textures and colors. I don’t buy expensive paper because I am playing and experimenting. I generally like 300 lb. paper. This grade of paper or a higher grade prevents most buckling and sagging. It also looks good in a frame, however, it is not my intention to frame my paintings.

I first tape my paper on a piece of plywood using painter tape. I then gesso it. I like to cover paper prior to painting over it with acrylic gesso. It seals the paper so that the paint does not sink in. It floats on the paper like it would on canvas.

This week I cut a large piece of paper in half and taped both pieces to my board so that I could use the same palette on both of them. Again, I was playing. I haven’t worked on two pieces with the same palette for a long time. Here they are with green Frog painter tape in the middle and around the sides:

Playing with acrylic and paper

Next, I separated them to see how they looked alone and added some finishing touches:

Ann Hart Marquis-New Mexico Winter #3-acrylic painting on paper

Ann Hart Marquis-New Mexico Winter #4-acrylic painting on paper