Acrylic painting — Learn from experience
I am learning a lot from my experience blogging about my progress in going through my ‘waste not, want not’ technique. For one thing, it might be best to have a finished product before actually beginning to post the blogs. Every time I think that I’ve reached the final step and the painting is ‘finished’, I still don’t like it. To be honest, even as I write this, I’m still unsure. But since I started this, I am going to see it through to the end. Even if the end is gessoeing over the whole thing and starting from scratch.
Painting #1, Step 6
This is where I left off in Blog #5 of the process. You can read about from the beginning at #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5. I like it, but it’s still too dark and not enough contrast. This seems to always be my biggest challenge. So I experiment and learn from experience.
I tried several times to add a little white and then some more yellow and light green, but nothing seemed to work just right. So, I decided to take another tack and go with two main colors completely separated — yellow/green and blue. I taped over the acrylic skins and basically had a box with a border. I painted outside the skins in blue and inside the yellow and then added a few streaks of color for interest. Then I painted the acrylic skins in black, white and shades of grey … and came up with another ugly stage (#1-6a) and another one after that (#1-6b) … and a few more that I didn’t capture on camera. I give up on the “box” and go back to the original composition. I finally reach a point that is once again presentable (#1-6c).
Is it finished?
It’s presentable, but I still am not crazy about it. It’s time to take more drastic measures. I’ll work on it some more and write it up in the next blog.