Metamorphosis

That's a rather long name for a painting, but I think it really fits the work in progress that I'm sharing with all of you today. I began the painting with a variety of watercolors painted onto a 36x36 canvas. If you watched my previous YouTube demo you'll recognize the plastic over wet paint beginning that I used before. But I'll post a few pics for you anyway....

After this has dried completely, I remove the plastic and turn the canvas several times until I find a pattern that is pleasing to the eye. The pic below shows the underpainting on my easel. Since everything is transparent at this point, I begin by adding acrylic paints to create some opaque shapes. I often follow the patterns from the underpainting but not completely.

After turning the canvas again, I've painted more shapes with acrylic inks and thinned acrylic paint. Have also used a yellow ink to glaze some of the areas. The crop below shows the blue painted areas on the left and the glazed area on the right.

I continue to build areas of opaque paint and transparent paint until several layers have been achieved. Taking a break gives me time to reflect on the paintings possibilities. And I decide to introduce a new layer using stencils which have a defined shape - squares. This will add tension to the painting. The flowing shapes against the more structured shapes.

That's it for today! I'll post the outcome in my next blog and you can see more changes. Hope you are enjoying seeing more of my process. I'll be teaching a workshop this spring so stay tuned for info on that!

carly