Explorations

Why stamps?

I had a great day today. I held a paper mosaics workshop at Goodwood Library. Eleven eager artists attended and had a good time. I gave a quick rundown on tools and materials and let them have at it 😀 It was great fun to see the different interpretations and experimenting going on and I […]

This is an updated version of a previous exploration. I’ve updated it and reposted it here for today’s workshop participants and anyone else who might be interested. A new exploration on paper mosaics will follow shortly 😀 Do you remember those fun paintings we did as a kid in school – blob some paint on […]

I’ve just started a new painting.

This isn’t anything new for me, I start paintings all the time, but it suddenly occurred to me that it might be interesting to document the process from the beginning.

Basically yellow, orange, red and purple reside beside each other on the colour wheel in that order and are harmonious. However, if you flip the order of the colours and lay them next to each other we encounter the fact that yellow and purple are direct contrasts and spark off each other.

Several days ago I was rifling through the Net looking for a way to make my own stencils. My sister has been experimenting with stencils and moulding paste and has gotten some interesting results, so I wanted to try it out for myself. But although I have a handful of stencils here, mostly lettering stencils, I didn’t really want to be confined to other people’s creations, I wanted to make my own.

Do you remember those fun paintings we all did as a kid in school – blob some paint on a piece of paper then fold it over, rub, and open it up to see some pretty butterfly shaped random compostitions? Well, these are what I’m calling butterfly paintings. I used to love them as a kid and I’m loving playing with them now.

This is a technique for creating marbled/semi-blended backgrounds (mostly) on canvas that takes advantage of the slight three-dimensionality of self-leveling gel and its ability to semiblend colour and catch it in mid-motion.

Some time ago I did a series of experiments with paint and bubble bath. They proved quite popular and I had several expressions of interest in a tutorial, so I wrote up my first fully documented Exploration. Since then I have received a request to do a video of the technique. It has taken me a while to get there as I didn’t have the equipment to actually put a video together, but a few days ago I finally managed to wrangle one out of my iPad. It is nothing snazzy, but it does demonstrate a part of the procedure I had difficulty explaining in the tutorial.

I was giving my eldest daughter a bath one night, swirling bubblebath around in the tub, when the bubbles suddenly grabbed my attention. They had a beautiful texture. I wondered if they could carry paint and leave a print on paper. Of course, I had to explore the idea.