Category: Painting (page 1 of 1)

I painted this on my first sheet of homemade paper made from recycled junk mail. I used an old blender to turn the mail mixed with water into pulp. I poured the pulp onto a framed screen, but I didn’t use a mould to make straight edges. I wanted the edges to be rough. I ended up with a thick, textured, gray sheet. I air dried the sheet on a board overnight. The paper curled a bit. I ironed it flat.

The picture I painted is a combination of two reference photos I took of the Little Pudding River (it is really more of a creek) just east of us. The background trees are from one photo and the foreground trees and brambles are from another.

Painted on homemade paper made from junk mail using Turner Acryl Gouache with a variety of flat and rigger brushes. Image is roughly 8.5×7.5 inches (22×19 cm).

I’ve been thinking about this picture for days, weighing the various ways to do it. I could paint it on paper, film, canvas, or wood panel. I could do it in ink, watercolor, acrylic, charcoal, or gouache. I decided to go with gouache on paper. I worked from a reference photo I had taken in 2009 while I was recording birds in the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge south of Salem.

I donned my rubber gloves and started by rubbing water on the paper with my hand and then I used my fingers to smear paint and mix it on the paper. I used a light blue, pink, and white to block in the sky and water. Next I added the light blue mountains and the central tree line with a flat brush and blocked in the colors of the foreground. I then switched to a round brush to do most of the detail work, and finally I used black and white ballpoint pens to add some very thin lines and detail. All in all, it took me about and hour and a half to complete.

Strathmore 500 Series Heavyweight Mixed Media paper, Turner Acryl Gouache. Image is 7×12 inches (17.5×30.3 cm).

Jim

Here is an example of painting on film. I used acrylic gouache on Dura-Lar matte film painting on both the front and the back.

Jim