A New Take on Stripes

 These layered and textured stripes came out of a fallow period, just after an intense six weeks of teaching. I wanted to loosen up, lighten up, and just get some paint on surfaces with no particular ideas. The first couple of days of this practice - just go into the studio and put paint on paper/canvas/panel - felt pretty unproductive, like just spinning my wheels. And it IS just spinning my wheels. But persistence paid off in the form of a new exploration in stripes.

I will be demonstrating these techniques on May 21 on Zoom.

See details of my Technique Takeaway at Winslow Art Center here.

 

Stacked Stripes #1, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #2, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #3, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #4, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #5, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #6, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #7, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #8, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #9, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

Stacked Stripes #1, 11"x14", acrylic on bristol

All of these are available as prints and on products on FineArtAmerica/Pixels. 

The Bristol I am using can be found here.

I use a squeegee to apply paint in many of these. See them here.

Other supplies include Golden paints, Blick Matte Acrylic White, and Utrecht Matte Medium.

Although the pieces do not particularly feature it, some have Golden's new So Flat Matte paint in them. These are just gorgeous, lush paints, with a beautiful consistency and opaque coverage. It just became available at art retailers last month. Here it is at Blick. 

I am excited to experiment more with layers and textures in this new stripe format, and this confirms my hopeful idea that When In Doubt, or when I feel out of steam or out of ideas, just putting paint on surfaces - keeping my hand in it - can lead to a path forward.

Layering and Sanding

If you have been over to my Facebook page, you'll see that I'm working on pieces that make use of what I'm calling "extreme layering". I build up layers of collage (using Utrecht Matte Medium), and also layers of Sandable Hard Gesso, sometimes mixed with paint, and then sand down the layers with an orbital sander. I use a lot of other techniques as well, but this sanding offers such great surprises!

The above are all 14"x11" on Blick's Bristol. I think wood panel would be a good substrate too, but if you begin with a layer of gesso and then about four layers of collage, this bristsol is sturdy enough. I am using a lot of magazine papers as well as painted and printed papers. I have the benefit - thanks to those of you participating in my collage challenge! - of SO many different collage papers.

When I have explored this process sufficiently, I'll do a workshop on it.

Some New Work in Nuetrals

I've been experimenting with layering acrylic paint and scraping through, creating texture and line with a minimum of colors.  You can see some pieces I did about a year ago here.  Mostly I've done these pieces as technique demonstrations, but thought I'd try to take it a bit further.  Here is a video on some of the techniques I'm using:

And a few of the finished works:

You can see the whole collection at Jane Davies Art Gallery.  And learn the techniques at my workshops in Gloucester, Whidbey Island,  Rhinebeck (OMEGA), and Dillman's Bay Resort in Wisconsin.

A Few Finished Pieces

Here are a few that came out of the Deli Paper Print series.  I have, at this point, about sixteen in the works, some of which will come to conclusion.

 

 

 The following are still works in process.

I am really excited about the layering, making marks, scraping back, painting over, creating texture.  I am not limiting these pieces to a specific set of techniques.  They did all happen to start with the deli paper prints, but could just as easily start somewhere else.  I'm really enjoying seeing how space develops: flat space and layers of depth.  These shapes keep emerging, so I'm going with it.  Shapes, scribbles, grids... 

Deli Paper Prints

Well, the finished pieces are layered and layered and layered, so they are more paintings than prints.  The deli paper prints are the beginnings.  THANKS to those of you who have sent, are sending, and have offered to send deli paper!!

Here is a short video on how I use deli paper to print, or transfer, paint.

First stage.  This is as far as I got in the video.

Then I scribbled all over it and applied more paint.

This version is almost done.

And here, I think it is done.  Not certain, but we'll let it sit a day and see.

This is the second piece that is finished, I think, out of the twelve in process.

 The rest of the pieces are in process, but some are almost finished, I think.  Sometimes the last 5% takes the longest, so I won't speak too soon.  They are all 12"x12" on printmaking paper.

Materials used in the video include:
Blick Matte Acrylics
Golden Open Gel
Deli Paper
See My Favorite Materials for papers and other paints.

We use this and other deli paper techniques in Layering with Transparencies workshop, which I'm offering this spring in Kansas City and Portland, Oregon.  Also in Big Fat Art: Big Fat Art Weekend in Vermont (March) is full, but I'm offering a four-day Big Fat Art workshop at Pacific Northwest Art School in September, and a one-day Big Fat Art workshop in Virginia Beach in October.

Layering and Making Textures

I am working on a series of pieces that are 12"x12", collage and paint on paper.  I'll be mounting some of them (ones I want to exhibit) on wood panel.  I don't know what these are about yet, what themes might emerge, but I am clearly working with a grid format; printed text as a background, a limited palette, and lots of layering.

Here are some of them spread out on a table.

Here is one in process.

Another one in process.  This one may be almost finished.

I thought I'd share some of my layering techniques with you.  These are just a few of what I'll be teaching in Layers and Textures in Kansas City in March, and Layers and Textures in Portland in April.

Here are two that are finished: 

This is the first one I work on in the video.

In this one I use the same contact paper masking technique a in the video.

Out on a limb some more

I've just done a few more pages in my sketchbook where I'm out on a limb. "Branching Out - Out on a Limb" is this month's theme for the Sketchbook Challenge. I was experimenting with layers and cut outs, not aiming for anything in particular, but just pushing these elements around. None of these is a "piece", but rather a page, a question, a "what if?" I discover so much when I work in my sketchbook with no expectation of a "finished" page or piece. It's quite freeing.

On this page I used a cut out of a bottle over a cut out of a modified circle; layers of acrylic paint in varying degrees of opacity, applied with a brayer and brush; some painted tissue paper; a scrap from my work table paper (the paper I lay down under my work). Oh, and charcoal.


On this page I first layered some collage: scraps of book pages, handwriting, a few things like that. Then paint over cut outs; the bottle form as a silhouette; I removed some of the collage, added more. Just a playful back and forth to see what happens if...


This one is the more "composition" - like. I was experimenting with layers, and also playing with this compositional format - the abstract landscape, turned almost cruciform.

That's it. Just showing a few of my recent experimental pages. Thanks for visiting!