I like to try new techniques, and often will end up with a series. “Emerald Forest” started it out, then “The Forests of Lunaria”, “Rainbow Grove”, and “Fly”. All are acrylic and wax pastel on cradle board. I love the texture and scribbles, I love that they were intuitive, I love the colours, and I love the little daily escape they give me!
All are available as prints and on various wonderful products at my online shops! 🙂
linktr.ee/sunshyneart
It’s been forever since I’ve posted here. There just never seems to be time! But today, I decided to just do it, since I was on my computer anyway!
I’ve done many, many paintings since my last post, and I usually take progression shots. So, instead of taking hours to figure out what to write about, I just picked randomly from my latest ones.
This one is called “Enchantment” because it sort of just magically appeared. I started playing with paint, like always, and it almost made itself! lol I’ve started experimenting with new mediums, and acrylic inks, liquid watercolours, and high flow acrylics are very freeing! I like to put a stencil down and just let them flow underneath. It’s messy and undefined, and makes for beautiful backgrounds! I’ve found cradle board, prepped with gesso, works well for a smoother finish. I’ve been using it a lot lately, because it can be distressed easily, and stamping/collage works better because of the rigidity of the surface.
Added grease pencil doodles, as part of the intuitive process. Just letting my mind flow. More stencilling on top in white, then glazed over with the transparent flowy mediums. The qualities of each are interesting. The liquid watercolour can be tricky because it can be reactivated with water to a certain extent, and they, plus the acrylic inks tend to bleed through any white painted over them, which gives a beautiful translucency to the background!
I like high flow acrylics because they behave like regular acrylics, but work like inks. They are more opaque, and can be thinned to the slightest glaze, or used full strength for stronger color. Also, they don’t bleed through to the next layers. I like to add details with regular tube acrylic, because I like the contrast of the thicker paint over the luminous backgrounds. 🙂
Available as prints and on various products at most of my online shops. linktr.ee/sunshyneart
I love to photograph my progression of making a painting come to life. Especially the ones I don’t have a starting plan for. Often it involves completely painting over what I had, and other times it is just a build…with foundation colours and marks, that decide the direction.
I add, I take away. Building up layers of colour and texture, and marks. Until it feels right.
Until it speaks to me, and gives me an idea as to what it wants to say…
Colour transforms the piece. I love bright, and happy colours, and my paintings usually take a joyful direction because of this. I also love defining shapes out of the bottom layers, painting around them to make them stand out, and giving them a surprise uniqueness, over just painting them on.
Birds and flowers make me happy, as do layers of luscious colour! 🙂
I especially love the freedom of expression doing an intuitive mixed media piece. Deciding as I go along. Of adding texture and collage elements of words and images, to further the story.
Finally, it feels right. It is playful. It tells a story. It conveys a “presence of wonder”….. 😀
Available as prints, and on a wide range of products at my society6 shop:
https://society6.com/product/presence-of-wonder1455112_mug?sku=s6-9481170p30a27v199
Sometimes I will have an idea for a painting, and it just will.not.work. The idea was good, and I liked the design, but it was like I forgot how to paint! It felt forced. It felt too planned…which is weird in itself, because I OFTEN plan paintings. This one, though…I repainted it twice before ending up with the design below. Thought it would work finally, then couldn’t get into it. Very frustrating! So…I started whiting it out. That is a bit scary to do, because I start second guessing myself! lol
There were a few flowers that I thought were nice, so I kept them, and purged everything else….
I ended up with just a few, and decided to let them take the painting where IT wanted to go. Adding texture here and there with molding paste, and gels, using my homemade stamps, and intuitively adding the color with mostly my fingers…I could see it starting to go in a certain direction….
Working in the way I do…of layering color, and playing with color relationships, I started really loving what was happening, and the more I relaxed, the easier it came together. There is a rush in it for me when I am loving how colors are working together, or I get a particular effect, even if that effect is largely by accident! 🙂
Layering the color with glazes creates such a lovely translucent effect….
Iridescent paint is so fun! I have been using the purple and blue to add extra interest to my paintings. In this one, I added it on a few of the flowers, and also my raised dragonfly. 🙂
The finished piece turned out so well! Hard to believe it started out as 4 do-overs! lol
I named it “Peace, Love, and Joy”. Peace and Joy for how it makes me feel when I look at it, and Love for how it turned out! 😀
Available as prints or on various products at my online shops:
https://society6.com/product/peace-love-joy781949_framed-print?sku=s6-7716123p21a12v52a13v54
https://artofwhere.com/artists/winona-d/clothing/yoga-leggings/1059102
I love how alcohol inks work on canvas! I’ve only done two so far, with a third in the works, but I am hooked! The only thing I wish it had in common with working on ceramic tile, is not staining. I like how on tile, I can remove the ink to get a brilliant white highlight or area. I can get it lighter on canvas, but with still a stain of the color I’m trying to lift from. Could maybe try frisket, but then again… it feels too controlled. I tend to like to let the inks decide where the painting will go. 🙂 With these two fantasyscapes, I let the ink do just that. I let it flow where it wanted, to start out… then I saw a direction to take the painting. 😀
Abstracts can be so hard to name!! Sometimes a feature will jump out and give me a name for it, or the colors/shapes/ atmosphere will remind me of something, and one pops into my head. Other times, I sit here baffled. And they need names. For my web sites, and because they. just. do. haha
Once in a while I will just make up my own words for the titles. Often I do these weird, otherworldly looking pieces, and they are perfect for made up names. Bysarinth sounded like a cool planet to visit. With weird purple plants and a golden sky….
😀
Did a landscape series, recently. I’m a bit obsessed by skies and mountains! lol
Not based in true reality, with the hyper coloured skies, etc., they are inspired by what moves me. 
The three suns are something I paint in a lot of my fantasy landscapes…they represent my 3 sons, who are the lights of my life. 🙂 ❤
😀
I opened a new online store at Redbubble.com today! They have a nice range of products to feature my artwork on! 🙂
“Sunflower” is my latest piece, done in alcohol inks…. Happy Summer! 🙂
https://www.redbubble.com/people/sunshyne66?asc=u
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