Midnight Vines

Assignment: To experiment with multi-media and techniques.

Category: Abstract

Tools: Stretched canvas, acrylic paint, paper and mini blade.

Technique: One of my more complicated techniques, believe it or not. lol.

First I painted the canvas blue, then I cut out vine shapes in paper and brushed them on the canvas with water so they would lay flat and stick over the blue color.

I then painted yellow over the whole canvas and on top of the vine shapes sticking to it. Then I cut out circle shapes from the paper and brushed them on the canvas with water in the same method as I did the vine shapes.

Then I painted blue over the top of everything until I had that muddy color that you see for the background. It seemed like it was missing some color, so I ran a very wet brush with red paint along the top and stood it upright so the paint would drip down.

While the paint was drying I let drops of water fall onto the canvas from a brush from above. I let everything sit to dry at that point. When the paint was close to dry, I dabbed off the water drops to leave little white splashy shapes on the top.

Then I slowly peeled off all the paper shapes to reveal the different colored patterns underneath. Neat!

It looked a little empty, so I took the now dry paper vines and painted one black and left the other white and then pasted them to the top (you can't see in the picture, but the vines flow off the canvas).

End Result: The purpose of this project was mostly to experiment, and I had always wanted to try this "subtractive color" technique I had in my head, so for that reason I was happy with it. However, the actual result seems a little rough to say the least. Were I to try it again, I think I would plan my layout better and use a more sturdy material than paper to lay over the color, like perhaps string or tape or rubber or something. Overall though, it's not too bad.

Looking at it after the fact it reminded me in some strange way of someone who had been murdered and then left in a field of vines and in death is looking up through them to the sky...... Um. I'm a poet now?

lol. Anyway, enjoy it. Sorry this is just a photograph of the original piece, so the colors and clarity are a little wonky.