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. 😀
“Botanica” 2017“Botanica” 2017 (click pic for store link)“Aetheria” 2017“Aetheria” 2017“Aetheria” 2017 (click pic for store link)
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….
I hate being creatively blocked! Sometimes the trigger is obvious, sometimes it just hits out of the blue….like this last few weeks. So frustrating when that happens! It feels like I forget how to paint, or create anything, for that matter. It makes me grumpy, and sad… *sigh*
Finally, on this last Monday, it was gorgeous outside, and I had free time, so I decided to just sit down with my alcohol inks, bound and determined to end the stupid block… and I produced four alcohol ink pieces! Alcohol inks to the rescue this time, so it seems. 🙂 Because they are so free in their ways, they were a good kickstart. I just put on some groovy tunes, sat out on my sunny patio, threw some color on my substrates, used some stencils, and went where it wanted to take me.
The results….
“Woodland” 2017 alcohol inks on Yupo“Oceania” 2017 alcohol inks on Yupo“Jovia” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile“Celebration” 2017 alcohol inks on Yupo
Because of this lovely start, I have another in mind. So my creative wheels are again turning! Yay! 😀
Recently I had been wanting to try painting with alcohol inks. I had come across some gorgeous paintings online which were done with them, and I loved the flowy expressiveness achieved with them. It is such an intuitive process using them. They have a mind of their own, but some control can be achieved using straight alcohol (I used isopropyl) and various sizes and shapes of brushes. Largely, I just let them do their thing, and then tweak the picture here and there. Experiment, experiment, experiment! Too fun! 😀
The only thing is that a lot of ventilation is needed, as I found out the hard way! I mean, I knew it would be somewhat fumy, but working as small as I did, on 2inch square ceramic tiles(which I got really cheap at the home improvement centre), I was too close, and ended up with a headache on my first go around! I need to pick up some low odour alcohol at the art supply store, and I also want to continue my ink exploration with a specialty paper called Yupo. They need to be sealed with a fixative, also, or the ink will rub off of the tile.
I’ve done three landscapes and three abstracts, so far. Since they are very small, I made them into fridge magnets. 🙂
“Rockies Summer” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile“Rockies Sunset” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile“Foothills” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile“Organica” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile“Psychedelica” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile“Aquatic” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile“Revelry” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile
They are available in my various art shops as prints, and on products. 🙂
“Organica” on a floor pillow @ society6…..Click pic for link. 🙂“Aquatica” on leggings @art of where….click pic for link. 🙂
I recently joined an art networking site called paintingsilove.com, and it is a wonderful site for getting feedback on your paintings/drawings, and for the inspiration aspect to it, as well. I often gather creative energy when I visit there! One comment I received on a painting I posted, called it “lush”, and that word was a great prompt to break through the creative block I was experiencing at the time. 🙂
I thought of the word, and what it meant to me, and I immediately went to Hawaii in my head. The lushness of that place is beyond amazing! The scenery notwithstanding, it is lush in other ways, as well, like the scents, and the tastes, and the general feeling of the place.
I felt inspired to do a painting with tropical colours, with the objective being to give me a sense of being in the tropics every time I looked at it. And also a feeling of peace and joy. 🙂
I wanted also to do it intuitively, instead of having a detailed plan. I wanted to see where my mind would take me, just by using color and imagery such as flowers. I started my usual way, with just a background of smeared color, and then looked at it to see what would emerge. I found three birds, a large heart surrounding two of them, and another smaller heart to the right of them. Birds seem to keep appearing in my work! Hearts always did, and continue to do so. Must be some kind of symbolism in that for me, I suppose. lol
I added stencilled flowers, and began to paint the top layers, sketching out my shapes with white chalk, and going with the crackle gel effect again, in spots because I love it so much! 🙂
Painting a slightly translucent layer of white, then going over it in a color gives a lovely luminosity with acrylics, so I tended to employ it quite a bit with this piece. The finished painting fills me with color joy when I look at! I hung it in my foyer, so I see it a LOT. It turned out as happy and tropical as I had intended without using stereotypical tropical imagery like palm trees, etc. Have to be different, ya know! 😛
“Tropica”
I have it posted at my various art shops. It looks great as prints and on products such as tote bags! 😀
“Tropica” @ society6…..Click pic for link! 🙂“Tropica” on leggings @ art of where….click pic for link! 🙂
My newest little acrylic started out bright purple and blue, and I had no idea where it was going to go. It wasn’t moving me, so I mixed white and bronze yellow together with my fingers, and just smooshed it all over to cover the purple.
I then “drew” into the wet paint with my pointy tools to bring out the purple underneath. I also used my new fave “paint lifter” which is a piece of cotton lace-like ribbon.
I missed doing my whimsical landscapes, so that is where this one ended up going. I love my trees, hills, and mountains! 🙂
I did the colouring over the white/bronze yellow background with acrylics heavily diluted with floating medium, so that they were super transparent. I built up the color, transparent layer by transparent layer….sides too…of course!
I love how the glazing gave it a vintage kind of feel….especially over the distress marks I had made earlier. Super pretty colorations! 🙂
I like the little landscape I ended up with. Needed an interesting name. Sometimes(usually! lol) I have a very hard time coming up with names for my paintings.
I thought it looked like a happy, magical place to be…a place where one might find unicorns grazing. ;D
So, I’m on this intuitive painting kick, where I start with a blank canvas(been working with wooden ones lately), and just add color and go where IT wants to go, not a direction I lead it in.
I love to play with colors, and their relationships to each other, and I love trying out new effects…or surface treatments. It is very fun to see which direction my painting will go, and what color combinations I can achieve when I do this.
I started this one with just laying down a blue background, and then using lots of water, adding white spots to it. I like the soft edge effects I get when the canvas is wet, and I add the color onto it, and it spreads like it does when using watercolour. I used thin consistency acrylics. I glazed a bit of magenta over some parts of it, after it had dried, then used modelling paste through a stencil to add a flower.
At that point I knew I wanted to go with some kind of flower theme. I added another large flower, then when the paste was fully dry, glaze painted them with multiple layers of color. I also added more color, using glazes and water effects.
I liked what I ended up with, and then needed to decide if it was finished, or not…sometimes a tough decision!
I decided it needed more, and I wanted to employ my newly handmade flower stamps. Instead of stamping directly onto the canvas, I printed the flowers onto tissue paper, so I could arrange them to my satisfaction. The amazing thing(I found out doing it) with the tissue paper is that it required no glue to adhere it! All I did was wet down the area where it was to be placed, and it stuck itself to the canvas! And the white parts nearly completely disappeared, to leave just the black printed parts, and the blue background. Very cool! I then glazed a bit of color over them, and painted around the edges a bit….just to make sure they were stuck! lol
I needed to incorporate line into it, so I added a few flowers on tall stalks, did some more color tweaking, and ended up with “Serenity”. I love it. I love the colors, and the joyful subject matter. I know when I succeed at a painting if it makes me happy looking at it. 🙂
Recently I discovered how much fun it is to make my own stamps…using play foam sheets, and scraps of mat board. 🙂
I originally wanted to make a few to use in my mixed media paintings, because to buy stamps at the craft store requires a small fortune!! ugh!
Anyway, I had seen it done in one of my many art reference books, and being that play foam is about $1-2/package of 4 sheets at the dollar store, and I have loads of scrap mat board gathering dust, it was looking like a nice economical option.
So, I set out to make some swirls, and ended up making hills, a tree, flowers, hearts, peace signs, a sea horse, a sun, a dolphin, and even a whole mountain landscape(not pictured)! I couldn’t seem to stop…it was so much fun! I made a few more than one or two that night! lol
I just cut the shapes, used white glue to attach them to the mat board, then when they were stuck, distressed them with various metal tools, to get texture marks, and add interest.
They work well even with full strength watercolour! I am happy with how they turned out. 🙂
I also tried to make stencils with a glue gun. It was loads of fun to do, too! Haven’t tried them yet, though. I need to figure out how to make them lay flatter! 😛
Sunshyne Art & Design 
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