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Experimentation

After the little paintings I did a few weeks ago I thought I might experiment some more with painting on canvas. I should preface this with the fact that it was an all around bad idea

  
The problem is I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to painting canvas. I can paint on faces,  you will get to see more of that next week but paint and canvas baffles me. 

  
I’m not sure what brushes blend well, as was the case with this first experiment. I’m pretty sure the brush I used was too stiff, so I got some strange brush strokes going on. 

  
I’m not really sure what order to put colors down in, this was  also a problem with this painting.   Hint; don’t try to put the blue of your sky over the yellow of your sunset or you end up with a strange green sky.

So the whole thing has been a process of learning through experimentation. 

But you guys are allowed to see my failures as well as my successes. 

  
I also experimented a bit with watered down acrylics the technique was cool even though I really had no control over anything

  It’s not terrible, I just don’t really like how the little cartoony mermaid subject looks… I should have known I’m just not good at figures. I’ve still got four canvases to play with so if anyone has any tips or blogs they recommend they would be greatly appreciated. 

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Something New

I have been rummaging through my craft closet, trying to clean it out and trying to find some new things to try. 

  
When it comes to crafts I tend to impulse buy. This is whether I know what I’m going to do with something or not. So when I came across the mini canvases I got a while ago I figured it was about time I got out of my comfort zone and give it a whirl. 

I really had no idea what I was going to paint on them, or for that matter how to do it. I’ve only ever painted on canvas once before and that was in an instructed class. 

  
This is the fruits of that labor, it now happily hangs in my fancy new bathroom which you can see here.

But you know how people say “my three year old could do that” of any abstract painting they don’t really understand. I figure what’s the worst that could happen

  
I just started by blending some colors I liked together, then I got this notion that it might be easy to give it some texture with a brick pattern. 

  
I found a little ampersand image and decided I could paint something like that… So I did… Or at least I tried. 

  
Then I realized I don’t have any kind of sealer or glazing medium, I don’t even know if I need such a thing. But I thought I would try this stuff instead. If nothing else it would give it more texture 

    
Or not… it just gave it a gloss. 

  

Two more mini canvases to go. This was the project of “suck it up, get it done, quit worrying about failing” it was rather cathartic in the end. 

I saw a saying about a house built with love

  
I decided I better build my house tentatively, so I sketched it out first. 

  
So I had love and an ampersand, what goes with love?

  
In this house that’s the only appropriate answer

  
After I did pretty good with the “house of love” (bow chika bow wow) I was kinda disappointed in my shenanigans (needs more malarkey) maybe I’ll redo it when I get more comfortable with this paint stuff. 

Really it turns out the painting part isn’t that hard it’s the inspiration part that bites, I don’t know what to paint or if I do I automatically think I’m completely incapable, so right now it’s baby steps. Oh and any inspiration would be greatly appreciated.