Showing posts with label new paintings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new paintings. Show all posts

Sunday, February 7, 2010

What’s So Great About Fluid Acrylics?

In the Tall Grasses Behind the Dunes
9" x 12"
acrylic on paper



Having bought small bottles of fluid acrylics--first for learning color theory and later for a watercolor workshop--I have been experimenting lately.

Using ideas from Celebrate Your Creative Self by Mary Todd Beam, I used the acrylics watered down and washed over various dried mediums and gesso with good results. She also has interesting projects using an acrylic retarder medium.

But having handled them for about two weeks, I wonder what all the fuss is about. I find them cumbersome to work with. When diluted with water, they can be like watercolors (I’m guessing here since I haven’t tried tube watercolors). Undiluted, they are very slippery and glossy. They do not travel well and dried paint clogs the spout openings. Often, flecks of paint splash onto a piece I’m working on rather than in a tray; both of these paintings have them! When wanting to only use a few drops, some bottles squirt a long stream instead.

Although I have mixed them with my heavy bodied acrylics, I honestly don’t understand the attraction of using fluid acrylics. I do not like the way the big washes and dilution warps even watercolor blocks (glued on all four edges). While some of the unintentional puddling can later add some exciting features in an abstract painting, they can almost ruin landscapes. Their drying time varies greatly.

Once I use these bottles up, I’m not greatly encouraged to buy more. Am I missing something? Who wants to relate their love for fluid acrylics?


Full Moon at the Dunes
12" x 18"
acrylic on paper

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Storm of Creation


Arctic Cold Front & New Moon
18” x 12”
acrylic on paper

Have you ever calmed yourself down by doing art? When you are feeling strong emotions, do you channel it into creative expression?


Crevice
12” x 18”
acrylic on paper

Recently on Mary Buek’s blog, she mentioned "art will save the world" and I believe it! Because it can save you, me, and countless others by re-focusing our current emotion—whether it be pain and turmoil or elation and joy—and coming out the other side with art born from pounding the keyboard, flinging paint, gouging stone or wood, or flooring the sewing machine pedal. Being such sensitive souls, artists have chosen to express their deep feelings by creating, not destroying. When our inner storm has passed, an expressive, heart-felt, even break-through piece of creation can be held in our hands. Looking closely, we may be even be communicating with ourselves, seeing a message only we can discover.





Beneath the Dunes
12” x 18”
acrylic on paper