In A Tickle

During the pandemic quarantine I came across an artist whose work in negative painting fascinated me. Her watercolors were vibrant and the negative painting created beautiful depth to the paintings. I wanted to learn her secrets. I also wanted to support an artist whose work I admired so I purchased her DVD and learned (at least some of) her secrets. Her name is Susan Crouch. The tutorial I painted is called Carolina Morning.

Susan includes a printout of the wrens on a branch with a couple of leaves to help get you started. After drawing in the wrens, I masked off that part and layed down a wash of color for the lightest background. Then I followed her instructions for painting the wrens.

The shapes and layout of the rest of the leaves are left to the individual painter to create. Following her guidelines I painted in my first layer of leaves. Or maybe I should say, I painted around my first layer of leaves! This is negative painting— to paint the shapes and space around your subject.

As those shapes dried, I began painting some texture and leaf veins inside some of the top leaves. I also negative painted more leaves behind the top leaves.

Negative painting requires a lot of thought process and you don’t want to go too dark too fast if you want multiple layers and depth. It took me days to complete the painting because each layer needs to be completely dry before adding more paint. It was also hard trying to keep from making my colors muddy in the layers.

This style of painting appeals to me because I love trying to achieve various textures and depth in watercolor. I learned so much in following Susan Crouch’s tutorial and can’t wait to try the technique in more paintings. I looked back at a much earlier post of trying to learn simple negative painting and am glad to see I’m making progress!

Have you tried negative painting? It’s a good workout for your brain!

Acrylic paint pouring is fairly new in the creative craft world. It’s been on my “must try” list since I first started seeing posts and videos giving demonstrations. I love the beauty and unpredictability of the outcome. So much depends on the paint used, the pouring medium, and how it’s put onto the painting surface that you would never be able to make a duplicate. It’s also something beginners can do with amazing results.

I picked up a pouring kit on clearance at our local craft store after Christmas. Last weekend two of my grandkids were here for the day and wanted to try something new. So out came the kit and we had some fun. Many videos are online now to show you the various methods of doing paint pours, so I am not going to show you how— I’ll just tell you what we did. (I was too busy helping them to take pictures of each step!)

After watching a couple of videos, the kids decided to do a dirty pour. That method is to put several colors of paint into a cup, lay the canvas upside down on top of the cup and then turn everything over at once. Then the cup is sitting upside down, full of paint, on top of the canvas. When you pick up the cup, the paint pools on the canvas.

B not only tilted her painting in each direction to let the paint spread over the canvas, she also used a light plastic spatula to do some design work. J wanted to only use tilting for his design.

Many demos talk about using a blow torch lightly over the paint to help activate the cells (created by the silicone additive). We don’t have a blow torch, so I used my craft heat gun. It seemed to work fine. Once they were satisfied with the way their paint pour looked, the paintings sat untouched for several days to dry completely. It’s a messy project, so I suggest using gloves, small flat cardboard box and plastic to catch the paint falling off the edge, and cups or something to hold the canvas up off the surface while it dries.

Since there was an over abundance of orange paints mixed, I scooped up puddles of paint from the plastic lining the cardboard and poured it onto a small pre-painted canvas just to see what it would do.

It must have been coated with something, because the paint separated as it dried, leaving interesting cracks. Either the silicone or the pouring medium must have caused the underpainting to blur but still keep its color. It made for an interesting experiment!

All dry!

I definitely want to try more paint pouring and I’m sure the rest of the grandkids want their turn as well! Have you done paint pouring?

Everyone needs a challenge in their lives to keep growing and expanding their gifts. My challenge now is staying one step ahead of my granddaughter, (or maybe more correctly, keeping up with her!) I love her enthusiasm and desire to learn. She’s the, now 8 year old, girl who paints with me every week.

In the past month, she entered an art contest for the WonderWorks Branson attractions being built locally. She just got notification her piece was chosen to be on display in the art gallery this next year when they open. She is so excited! (I’d show you her painting but we are not sure if we should share it online yet.)

She also set up a FaceBook page (with parent’s help) to feature her art called Black Panda Art Studio. She loves all things panda. Remember her first paintings I shared with you? You can follow her on FB to keep up with her art.

My granddaughter also sold her first commissioned painting. She wants to sell paintings to help pay for piano lessons and summer camp. She just got another commission request this week to start working on. Here is her first:

A couple weeks ago she informed me that she’s been doing a lot of thinking and made a decision to buy a building and make a studio/art gallery for her to work in. I asked if I would be able to display my art there too. She said, “Of course! You can work for me!”

This week we painted a bird from a photo online.

And here is my painting:

I better get my running shoes on so I can keep up with her!