Forever Green

I had another practice with Gelli printing but this time with acrylic paint instead of ink. It was also my first time using acrylic and for this purpose I went for Golden fluid acrylic instead of the standard paint from the tube. Used permanent green light, hansa yellow light and a bit of gold. As you can see it didn’t turn out as planned and fen looks rather messy. Next time I’ll know better than to use fluid acrylic! I thought of fluid in the first place because ink too is fluid and would flow well. As for the remaining paint from the brayer, I just rolled it all clean on the sides of the paper. Such a pretty green!

I had a gut feeling what I wanted to create from this mess. Something botanical of course. Trees were the first that came to mind and making them all abstract yet stunning. Once I made an outline, I added a coat of white gesso on the background except for the “grass area” on the bottom.

As to the background colour, I wanted to stick to a analogous colour scheme again so went for a bright blue shade by mixing Dina Wakley’s paint in Sky with Golden high flow acrylic in Phthalo Blue (Green Shade). And scumbled on some Titanium White paint on top. The “grass” area was filled in with Dina Wakley’s paint in Lime.

I was struggling in deciding whether or not to stop here or add another layer of something. Whilst I could have left it and fix something that’s not broken, the white gaps in the big tree was bothering me. Also, the big green blob on the right could do with some accent. First I scraped a bit of heavy-bodied acrylic in Light Green on the blob and pressed some of that colour around the big tree with my finger. I then stamped on some bubble-wrap prints with the Permanent Green fluid acrylic. Now we’re talking!

Creating something from a mess is also another fun part of painting. I’ve recently been in an abstract painting mood and developing ideas where the mind takes me to. And while we’re here, I wanted to share a few cool close-ups from parts of this painting. The effect of the paint bubbling up from the printing leads to some interesting patterns…