40"x30" acrylic on canvas
Oh my. Look at those drips. How could any self respecting artist allow such tender paths to self generate upon their canvas? I have to admit, they are starting to grow on me. I’m developing a pretty wet technique, watering down my paints quite a bit in certain situations. Believe it or not, you can get pretty good control over where the drips develop by how you finesse the brush. You can also create paths with excessively thick paint. So it is not really all that random, but also not completely controlled. I’ve also been paling around with mixing wet paint with wet paint, and drawing through the wet paint with charcoal and other dry media. The result looks something like this.
I love the contrast in this painting between the bright flat patches of that cadmium red I am so fond of and the wispy airy background. I’m still putting in some black lines here and there, but not relying on them so much. The composition is like a discordant experimental jazz track, but the soothing pallet pulls the action to the surface, tensely. It feels calm and subdued, but suggests that it may be about to explode.
This painting is on a 40″x30″ gallery profile canvas. It is primarily painted with acrylic paints, but parts are done in dry media such as charcoal and chalk pastel. The paint is applied both with pallet knife and brush.
Loveing the drips! I once spent an evening applying drips of black paint with a pipette all around the edges of 33′s ceiling at TEP. Your drips really make the spirally snake’s perspective interesting!