Art Supply Junkie

Alcohol Inks On Yupo - 5x7"

I said in my last post that I was fickle when it came to art media but I think it's more that I'm an art supply junkie.  The truth be told, I like experimenting with various arts and crafts supplies and yesterday I finally got around to playing with the alcohol inks.

It was the perfect day for it as we've been pretty much iced in since last Friday as the so-called big storm hit us before making it's way further north and east.  Since we knew the storm was coming, we went out on Thursday and I was able to buy some Adirondack inks at Michael's.  Fortunately, my DH & I both had a coupon and I still had money left on the gift card the grandchildren gave me for Christmas.  I still didn't get all the colors I wanted but got enough to play with and I also had the homemade inks from last week.  I didn't use them much in this painting but they seemed to work as well as the purchased inks.

Not great by any means but I had expected it to be a whole lot worse.  These inks are somewhat like watercolor in that they have a mind of their own plus you rarely do well the first time out of the gate.  It didn't help that the Adirondack inks were marked with esoteric names like "Stream", "Wild Plum", "Citrus" and looked different on Yupo than they looked on either the label or in the bottle.  I need to make a color chart so I'll know what's what!

This is my first alcohol painting and I'm fairly pleased with it.  Can I see room for improvement?  Definitely! But I hope to learn how these inks work by practicing and hopefully a masterpiece will eventually emerge!

Another Acrylic Painting

"Alliums" Acrylic on Canvas Hardboard

 

 

You might be justified in thinking that I really don't hate acrylic paint as much as I say I do but I'm just trying to finish up several paintings I started when first getting the paint and which I left to languish when I got too frustrated with them.  Some paintings have been put away for years!

In this case, I'd wanted to try the texture medium (which is an acrylic medium) and figured acrylic paint would be the most compatible with it.

While acrylic paint isn't my favorite medium to paint with, I have to say that I really like the texture medium and will probably use it under my gouache or oil paintings in future projects.  The medium gives a fun look to a painting but does have some little quirks when working with it.

First of all, it's really hard on your brushes.  I used an old round stencil brush to apply the medium and if I'd thought about it, I probably would have mixed my paint into the medium to save time and other brushes.  But, I kept adjusting colors in this painting so would have had to use regular paint brushes anyway.  I was doing some good thinking though as I used craft brushes from WalMart instead of my good, more expensive ones. 

Secondly, it's hard to get paint down into those valleys in the texture.  Again, mixing a colored texture to begin with would have gone a long way in helping with that.

And thirdly, you have to really plan ahead to use it as when it's dried and set up, it's there for the long term!  I had an area on another painting where it was used that I wanted to change and even intense sanding didn't remove it easily.  I really think you could call this stuff archival without any qualms at all!  It's sure not going anywhere at least!

Even though this is one of those paintings that felt like giving birth during the production of it, I think I like the results.  I hope you do too.