If you read last post, I spoke about how a work in progress is just that ... a work in progress. Now, I'm not going to presume to speak for other artists, though I know several who do this, but I sometimes deviate quite a bit from the original "plan" in my head for a painting when I work with acrylic in an abstract way. I almost always start out with something in mind, a thought or a word or a memory I want to express with the paint. If it's a portrait like Preordained, I stick with the program. Abstract is spur of the moment. On the other hand, with watercolor, I usually stick pretty darn close to the plan. There is a reason for that.
Watercolor isn't forgiving the way acrylics are. You don't just paint over something you don't like or isn't working for you. You're talking water, pigment, paper. Although watercolor is thought of as typically transparent, many of the pigments stain (IE: cadmium red) and won't lift from the surface of the paper without scrubbing. While that might be okay on occasion, most times it's a "no-no". Scrubbing the surface of paper lifts the fibers and creates rough spots which then disallow being able to do smooth gradients or blending - such as a soft check or neck area on a face like Orange Kimono. You get a rough spot there and, well, you're screwed. That smooth cheek looks like it has some kind of freaky skin disease. Unless you're willing to shift gears and make the painting more abstract or maybe a collage, nothing else to do but start over on a new sheet of paper.
Acrylics, on the other hand, lend themselves beautifully and perfectly to over-painting. They are opaque and cover each other up when used undiluted or in several layers if diluted not too thinly. When dry, they are somewhat like a thin film of plastic on the surface of the canvas. Where watercolors sort of soak in to the paper's surface, acrylics sit on top of the gesso coated canvas. Applied thickly enough to a relatively smooth canvas you can even partially peel them off if you want. I don't do that. I paint over.
What does this have to do with the work in progress? Well, I started using a dark bluish-purple on the butterfly to create some contrast against the pale blue/lavender background. As I mentioned before, I'm using An Ocean Of Time as a kind of reference for the current painting. On Ocean I used a dark brown to create contrast between the white and teal blue of the "water". I had thought to use the blue-purple as the contrast for the sky on this one. After getting the butterfly all painted up with the blue-purple color I stood back and just hated it. It's too stark. Even at this early stage in the process it just took over the whole thing. It threw the entire painting so off balance I knew if I used it as I had the brown in Ocean the entire work would be heavy and completely ruin the feeling of floating that I'm trying to convey.
My original "plan" was to do the painting quite different than where I've currently ended up. Where Ocean is brown, I'd thought to make this one white or a pale blue or lavender. Unfortunately, I realized I had painted the background so light that I thought the lighter color would not be contrasting enough and the butterfly (and some other elements I plan to include) wouldn't stand out the way I wanted it to. Conundrum. But not. Remember, I'm working with acrylics. I just got happy with the paint and darkened the background with a few thin glazes of paint, yet kept the 'blendiness' of the rainbow colors. Using water to thin the paint helps make different colors run into each other and creates more colors on it's own. Watercolor does this (though I don't use watercolor the way I use acrylics) and it's amazing. There is an artist, Roland Roycraft, who is incredible with pouring watercolor. I'm a fan of his watercolor work. Here's a couple of shamefully snitched without permission images to show you his lovely technique ...
Morning Mist by Roland Roycraft
Fall Birch by Roland RoycraftAh, so pretty ...
Now, moving along, this glazing of colors to darken the background pretty much obliterated the clouds I had painted on the canvas and that's okay. After studying them over the last couple of days I decided I wasn't really pleased with how they looked anyway. They were too defined, not as misty and vague as I had wanted. I can do them over, hopefully achieving the original effect I'd had in mind. This is exactly what is so nice about acrylics. If it ain't a'workin' ... paint over it!
Same goes with the butterfly. At the time of this posting it has already undergone several more metamorphoses. Pardon the pun. Right now, as I'm typing, I'm waiting for yet another change in it's paint job to dry. (I've taken a few breaks to paint while working on this post.) I have in my head an unclear idea of what I want it to look like and thus far haven't managed to make the paint cooperate enough to help me solidify the idea. What I'm going for is an effect much like the turtle in Ocean, a painterly effect. Not a fantasy butterfly, not a completely stylized butterfly, something dancing somewhere in between. The problem I've been having is I've been painting it too refined, to near realism and not loose and flowing as I 'see' in my head.
Well, maybe now the paint is dry and I can get some more work done ...
Namaste, y'all ...
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