Friday, June 19, 2009

More Fun with Scraping

Today, I thought I'd continue experimenting a bit with scraping oil paint and spritzing portions of paint on some small 5" x 7" panels. These surfaces were different from the artboards that I used in the last post, but the process was the same. Again, I'm using water mixable oil paint from Winsor & Newton Artisan and Grumbacher Max. Thank you, Karen for inspiring me to detail the process and to push a bit. First, I drew a quick sketch and with a palette knife laid down the sky.
  Then, I spritzed the sky with a water bottle and let it sit a few minutes. The photo has some glare from the camera's flash, but you can see how the water works on the paint.
  The next two show the paint layers, without any scraping on this one.
  In this next experiment, I knew that I'd have to scrape, so I didn't put great gobs* of paint on. *Is this a technical term? I did spritz the sky, holding it upside down, and you can see the drips forming cloud-like elements. The bright center of the painting is where I scraped.
  It's really fun to use these paints because they can be used like watercolors, thinned with water as an extender, or used as oils with a water miscible medium. I've titled these two paintings, On the Road to Silver City, One and Two.

4 comments:

Karen said...

Thanks for posting the process! It's very cool to see. I've never worked with the water-mixable oils and I'm intrigued by their ability to behave so fluidly and yet still mix as impasto-like textures with regular oils. So how do you not get totally carried away with the spritzing? Although that could be kind of cool, to spritz the hell out of it, then go back in, and back and forth. I especially like where we can see some of the watery marks in the second one.

gobs is absolutely an official term. It's in Ralph Mayer's book, isn't it?

Barbara Muir said...

Hi Melinda,

I looked at this painting on Saturday night in Chelsea, Quebec in a house on the river where I was toasting my brother for marrying his girlfriend of 15 years, and chiding him for doing it secretly, because I would have loved to have been there. The wedding's today. His girlfriend and I looked at your painting, this one and marvelled.

You are so good.

xoxoxoxBarbara

Melinda said...

What a wonderful moment, Barbara! Best wishes to the happy couple and many years of happiness to them.

It's food for the soul that you and your sister-in-law enjoyed my painting. Thank you.

Melinda said...

You've still got me smiling, Karen! I'm so glad that you asked about the process, and, you're right. It's wild with possibilities and I don't want to quit experimenting. Oh, yes, "carried away" is true. Remember the first musicians who smashed their guitars on stage? I never could understand that...until now. Art is so intense. Sometimes it is nearly overwhelming.

Okay! Gobs is now a technical term. ;)