Mixed Media demonstration -part 2

Here I am still at the make shapes and values stage. I have added a thin very dark glaze of acrylic, and while it is still wet, I spritz some rubbing alcohol with my handy Chloraseptic bottle (gives spotty spray rather than a fine mist). The rubbing alcohol pushes the dark glaze aside, revealing donut shapes of the lighter under glaze. I also stamped into this glaze with a dry stamp. I have also eliminated any distracting white shapes near the edges of the paper with transparent glazes.

Now I am working upright sometimes, so that I can get back and see what is happenind -trying to remember to get the big shapes right. I have glazed over various parts of the painting with transparent glazes of colour to give a wonderful glow and to link areas together, thereby creating larger shapes. You can still see some of my chalk outlines, which I have now changed since I first put them on. I am trying to play with the illusion of depth, making some of the boxes appear to be in front of others. It's fun to play with depth in an abstract painting, and to flatten the perspective in a realistic one!

Here I have removed the chalk outlines. This is it for the darks, for right now anyway. Up to now I have only been working with transparent layers.

This is the way it was left at the end of class. While working on it I have rotated it around many times and worked in that new orientation for a while, trying to keep my options open. Bad to fall in love too early! At this stage I have begun to add opaque lights into the painting. I am still just using the colours I began with, only this time they are added to gesso (my easy white) to make opaque layers. I have put some on translucently (thined with a bit of water) so that I could do my alcohol trick(see the light blue shape on the upper right edge) -repetition with variation, the key to a successful painting. Light against dark/dark against light. I applied some of the opaques through stencils to create new interesting textures. I really hated to leave it at this stage as I felt it was really beginning to come together. I will try to work on it this week to bring it to a finish -or maybe I will wait and do that so the class can watch next Monday. And thanks to Lindsay for providing the photos :)

Stay tuned for part 3... to come!