Fabric Collage painting with pastels and acrylics.

I have been experimenting with pastels lately and love mixing them with gesso and acrylic paint. There are so many beautiful colors in pastels that I can't always find with paints so mixing them with paint or gesso has been a great experiment for me. Golden makes a great product, Acrylic Ground for Pastels which creates a great, gritty surface to apply the pastels and when you apply it with a pallete knife it creates texture and depth in your paintings. I love this stuff!

I really like painting over the fabric. I found, though that I had to do quite a bit of sanding to distress and imbed the fabric deeper in the work. Finding an old eyelet blouse of mine, I promptly ripped up to use in this piece, which you can see on the figure.

I filmed this whole process and will be teaching a class. Details coming soon. Thanks for visiting!

Here is the start of this painting. I used matte medium to collage papers and fabrics (vintage hankies and linens).

I apply soft pastels in different areas of the painting to block in colors.

I paint with both acrylic titanium white and gesso and mix the pastels to create tones.

I then concentrate on the face using acrylics and alcohol inks.

I have some reference of birds on a branch to create the linear image next to the figure.

I collage over some areas to pull the piece together.

The final painting.

Here is a close up of the side...lots of texture to look at.

Here is a close up of the figure.

A jack-in-the-box girl

Here is a painting I worked on while taking a class with Mindy Murphy Lacefield. I really love working with collage. Yes.......more rabbits! I love working abstractly but then I have to have some realistic form in the work. I finally figured out that my goal is not to make a realistic painting but on the other hand not abstract either. I seem to go back in forth with my process of allowing myself to  paint wildly without any thought of realism, but then I reel myself in with reference around me to create form that makes sense. I have a huge library of images I can refer to when that stage of the painting is called for. It's a wild unexpected ride!

January has been a very busy month!

I have completed 3 paintings this month which I am going to show you in stages. The fabric collage painting has been filmed and will be part of an upcoming class. Will let you know details soon.
I have an new online class on thetroddenpath.ning.com and I will be teaching live at Random Arts in Saluda, NC in August. So excited!!
O.k. so here are the paintings and a few notes about them.

So this is the first painting. I started with some earthtones mixed with some metallic paint to give a subtle glow.

I continue adding layers of color using some warmer tones. I also added some stencils for texture. I  wanted this
girl to really glow so I used some metallic paint mixed with titanium white and yellow ochre for skin tones.

I really made alot of changes with this painting. I decided that her legs had to go and concentrated on creating subtle patterns
at the bottom of her dress which created a border of abstraction. The rabbits were imbedded deeper into the painting
and the dark abstract marks 1/3 down from the painting gives the impression of a landscape.

Here is a close-up of my girl. Metallics are now definitely a part of my skintone pallete. My goal was to create a very pale
glowing girl with a very dark earthtone background. The girl turned out the way I imagined but the background
changed drastically. The background I imagined wasn't working so I had to let it sit for a few days and wait till the
solution was revealed.

Painting animals is new in my work. Was never really interested in painting them before but now
I find they need to be in my paintings. It might be a result of my new studio that looks out to a huge
back yard. So far I have seen birds, rabbits, squirrels and the biggest surprise of all deer.

 

My new online class has started-Fabric Book Art

http://thetroddenpath.ning.com/group/fabric-art-book