my art on products – Sunshyne Art & Design

Progression

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”….. 😀

Presence of Wonder copy — “Presence of Wonder” ©WJD 2018

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

Reworked to Wonderful!

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….

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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….

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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! 🙂

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Layering the color with glazes creates such a lovely translucent effect….

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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. 🙂

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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! 😀

Peace, Love & Joy with signature — “Peace, Love & Joy” ©2017

Available as prints or on various products at my online shops:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/sunshyne66/works/28173272-peace-love-and-joy?c=710318-acrylics-and-mixed-media

https://society6.com/product/peace-love-joy781949_framed-print?sku=s6-7716123p21a12v52a13v54

https://artofwhere.com/artists/winona-d/clothing/yoga-leggings/1059102

I’m Now at Redbubble!

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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Featured Artist at Artwanted.com!

I was added to the featured artists list at Artwanted.com today! Yay! Kind of nice to finally not be lost in the vast sea for a change! 😀

http://www.artwanted.com/artist.cfm?ArtID=86778&Tab=Store

I have new artwork, so the timing is great! 🙂

“Cosmic Forest” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile

psychedelic butterflies — “Psychedelic Butterflies” 2017 alcohol inks on ceramic tile

Expressionism With Alcohol Inks

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

Aquatica — “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-floor-pillows — “Organica” on a floor pillow @ society6…..Click pic for link. 🙂

preview-leggings-585037-back — “Aquatica” on leggings @art of where….click pic for link. 🙂

Tropica

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! 😛

I have it posted at my various art shops. It looks great as prints and on products such as tote bags! 😀

tropica342510-bags — “Tropica” @ society6…..Click pic for link! 🙂

preview-yoga-leggings-585214-back — “Tropica” on leggings @ art of where….click pic for link! 🙂

Wonderment

Another intuitive painting. I had made this big peace heart stamp when I was on my stamp making kick, and was itching to use it. Then I got stamping fever, haha, and used a few of my other homemade stamps over a color blocked background….

Effect happy was I, so I went all out with some experimentation. Very fun was that!

I used a stencil to create the swirls with modelling paste, and did the streaking thing again with the crackle gel…

Then I also tried plastic wrap over wet paint….I love how that turned out….so random and beautiful! 🙂

I built up layers, and then I found some iridescent blue in my stash of old paint, and thought I would throw a little on my swirls…

I found these wonderful pens at the art supply store. Perfect for adding little details, like dots and words. They are acrylic, not ink, so will not smear when I put the varnish on at the end, and also are refillable, so that rocks! 😀

After layer upon layer, and tweaking with little details here and there, I ended up with something intricately colourful, joyful, and “wonderful”to look at. 🙂

BTW… It looks great on a shower curtain! 😀 @ society 6….

wonderment302926-shower-curtains — click pic for link! 🙂

Harmony

Another intuitive painting….because they are so much fun to do! And very mind freeing, too. 🙂 I love to play with color, and I love to play with layering and different effects.

Started out as usual…with blocks of my fave colors…using acrylics. Found some old crackle gel medium in my stash of stuff…and while it had gobbed up quite a bit from age, I used it anyway. Instead of letting it do its crackle thing, though, while the top paint coat was still a bit wet, I stuck a chunk of cotton ribbon on it, and pulled it off, and what I got was a very cool distressing, which revealed the bottom color layer….like it had “weathered”. Love it!

Did the crackle thing in this section too, and also used my homemade circle stencil, with modelling paste, to create more texture. Also stuck a word on there. 🙂

Colored the circles and painted a nice contrasting color around them…plus some “sun bursting” around my word. 🙂

Used some crackle paste next…which is a different species of crackle medium. lol

It is opaque, and has more of a cracked plaster feel. After it dried, I spritzed it with water, then added thinned down paint, and let it do its thing. Added a couple of my homemade stamps in there too….daisy, and a swirl. Love using those! 🙂 Building up more and more layers, as well.