Messing Around with Art

Teahouse      Encaustic/Oil /Mixed Media on Wood Panel

 One of my dear friends came over for a evening of art last night. We always have a great time playing around in the studio following dinner at Ya Hala, a restaurant in my neighborhood. I find that having a good friend over to make art greatly increases my inspiration and productivity. 

The above piece is a reworking of a demo I did during one of my classes at Art and Soul. Doing demos is a fun risk, as I never know what is going to emerge. I liked this piece a lot before, but am pleased with the changes I made today. It's done on a piece of wood from a broken up bureau or cabinet.  The piece has all kinds of stuff in it including teabags, vintage book scraps, WW II letter scraps, strawlike paper, and handmade paper.

My Friend's What the Heck Painting

My friend and I were both feeling a bit off last night, and she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. She decided to play around with acrylic paint on Masonite. She said she didn't think she was in the mood to produce anything good, so she'd just make a mess. As usual when we give ourselves permission to make something ugly, something good comes out. I think this painting turned out great! I love the movement,  color, and free brushwork.

Untitled as Yet    Photo Transfer/Encaustic on Wood Panel

I've been returning to my stash of pieces that didn't turn out so well and reworking them. I chose one encaustic piece that was okay but nothing special.  I excavated and found that under many layers of wax were some blender pen photo transfers on the bare wood. I painted white around the images, added oil and encaustic colors, and some text done by one of my students. I ended up with this abstract piece that was fun and freeing to make.

Texture Garden   Encaustic/Mixed Media on Wood

 

The above piece was another re-do. This encaustic piece had been done over so many times I have no idea what was underneath. So I decided to make the piece an ode to texture. I found some dried flowers, specialty papers, tissue paper, vintage book pages and raffia-like skinny thingys in my stash and went to town. You can see from the burned bits that I had fun with the torch, water nearby of course just in case.

The moral of this post is: Play, Play, Play!