Amira's Birthday Painting

                                       

Granddaughter Amira turned four on December 9th



As it was being mailed to Manila (with the Koebel family Christmas parcel) Amira's birthday painting needed to be light weight and smaller this year, but hey it was almost on time!

 

On our back deck on a warm day back in May 2013, Meg Nicks showed me and Win Dinn how she makes acrylic "pours". That tutorial, which I have since forgotten how to do, yielded the rich background below. Until November of this year I never knew exactly what I would do with it, but it proved to be perfect for "Butterflies". 

 

The richly coloured, very shiny surface of the first and only "pour" I've made

 

I went with Amira's mother's suggestion for the subject matter. Using a commercial stencil I applied the smaller mauve butterflies. Later I darkened some of the lower ones with thin washes of darker purple.  Without any particular plan I painted on the first butterfly ...

 

 

 

... and then the other two. Laura had suggested glitter, but I couldn't see how glitter would enhance the painting. With my favourite stencil and Ferro, a paste by Viva Décor which provides a lovely relief, l added the flourishes to the top left and bottom right corners.
 

I wasn't happy with the dull, slate colour of the flourishes

The graphite colour of the stenciled flourishes looked dead against all the pure colour so, with a fine brush, I painted over them with intense, purple alcohol ink, which absorbed beautifully.

  

The finished 12" x 12" acrylic painting  -  BUTTERFLIES   -  (unframed, with painted edges)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMIRA!

Teacher Training

What did the mixed media queens do the day after an intense weekend workshop? Why they insisted on making more art of course! Here we are on Monday morning eager to learn more ...

Look at how intent Win and I are to watch Meg make what are called pours

Below Meg drizzles fluid acrylic paint diluted with Golden GAC 800 directly onto a canvas before tipping and tilting it to have the colours move and flow into one another. Airbrush colours (which are even thinner paints) can be and were also used. 

Gloss medium will create interesting lumpy textures as in the pour (below) that Meg made on a sheet of high density polyethylene. Much later it will be peeled away like a skin. These skins can take weeks to dry. 

I love the richness of this sensational pour!

This is a pour I made on canvas. I was going for intensity of colour, but it lacks the variety that white would have added

It was a most glorious, hot day, without any wind, enabling us to work outside. The down side of the fine weather was the acrylic paints dried so very quickly that we had to bail out of making use of Win's demonstration. She recently purchased a Gelli printing plate and is using it with her own hand-cut as well as commercially made stencils. Take a look at what Win has done with this new toy here. We moved the Gelli plate indoors but ...

Win shows us how to make mono prints on her Gelli plate.  

... the truth be told Win and I were running on empty and even after taking ourselves out for lunch we couldn't rally enough to finish anything. Only Meg - who knows how to pace herself - was able to continue making art.  And the next thing you know we were into the wine ...



Meg showed Bill how to use gold leaf and here he is giving it a whirl

What we did accomplish was to enjoy one an others company on a beautiful day. We learned yet more techniques which will surely incubate and distill in our brains and ultimately show up later in and/or on more  mixed media paintings!