On The Bench - Oil Vignettes

Thought I'd give you a peek at some of the latest small oil paintings on my home studio work table.

When I have left over pieces of beautiful thick paper, I use painter's tape to mosaic them onto a portable drawing table background. These first get covered with a layer of clear or white gesso or acrylic paint, then I glue down map pieces with matte gel medium.

When the glue is dry, I draw over the surface with Caran d'Ache NeoColor II water soluble oil pastel crayons and use water to spread the color around to create an oil-friendly underpainting. After that dries, I paint on the surface with oil paints using several different shaped palette knives, keeping the paint strokes expressive and using the palette knife tip to scrape shapes into the painted surface. I make sure bits of the maps show through the background to add mystery to the finished paintings.

I'm in love with my collection of used domestic and international postage stamps; I select one, coat the back with Dorland's Cold Wax Medium and stick it to the oil-painted surface, pressing down with a palette knife. Finally, I use a small brush to add my signature to the paintings. (Note that sometimes it is best to let the paintings dry for a day or two before adding the signature.) The paintings get left to dry for 1-3 weeks, then the painter's tape is gently removed at an angle to the paper edge for an exciting reveal!

Saintly, 8in x 10in

Coronation, 9.5in x 11in

Passage, 5.5in x 7.5in

Peace Rising, 5.5in x 7.5in

Fierce, 5in x 9.5in

A great solvent-free way to clean the palette knives and small signature brush is to put a dab of linseed oil on a Viva paper towel or cotton cloth and simply wipe them off. (I learned this tip in Vicky Perry's Abstract Painting book) I hope you'll try this quick, fun way to create expressive mini works of art. Please share your results in the comments.

Happy Arting!  Tristina  :D

Art Journal Inspired ATC's

Colorful Artist Trading Cards

I was so inspired by finishing up my art journal for The Sketchbook Project, that last weekend I decided to play with my art supplies before putting them away. I grabbed a pile of blank bristol paper Artist Trading Cards (ATC's) and went to town.

I made two sets of 3 cards, starting at 11pm, before I finally petered out at around 2am. The beautiful thing was that I didn't have to get up early the next morning...Yay!

To create a background for the first set of cards, I used Portfolio water-soluable oil pastel crayons. I love their rich colors and I just randomly grabbed some colors and rubbed them on the ATC's. Then, I used a soft damp brush to move the colors around and get them to penetrate the paper a little and blend. Next I grabbed my box of Derwent Inktense water-soluable pencils and scribbled on the surface just to add my artist's hand to the cards. I had many scraps of paper around my desk from The Sketchbook Project leftovers, so I tore small pieces of papers that interested me and used regular gel medium to glue them to the ATC's after they had dried.

I have a large collection of stamps from around the world (about 2000 that I bought in Paris a few years ago) that always come to mind when I have projects like this, so I grabbed out about 50 and found 3 that matched the background colors that I had already laid down. I added texture with acrylic inks and paint both under and over the stamps and adhered the stamps and some 3-D elements with regular gel medium.

I finished off these cards using a soft charcoal pencil around the edges of the card and/or stamps and in some of the texture created by the paints and papers.

It felt so good to get these 3 little works of art done, that I continued on to make 3 more ATC's with a different theme.

Flower ATC's

I started the two cards on the left with acrylic fluid inks; one blue on the bottom and gold on the top, then the opposite on the second. The third card was an experiment with sticky grid tape that I painted over with acrylic paints. For the two left cards I used scrap tissue paper I had painted left over from The Sketchbook Project, glued it down with regular gel medium and stamped words on after dry with StazOn ink. The third card I glued a piece of scrap paper to and added a word torn out of a children's book.

I am a crazy woman for having elements that pop off my artwork, so I went to my canister of colored Prima Flowers and started auditioning the different color combinations with the ATC backgrounds. The flower on each card is a combination of 2 or 3 paper flowers I adhered to the ATC and to each other with WeldBond glue. I found at scrapbooking stores some really cool multi-colored flat-backed plastic DewDrops embelishments that I also WeldBonded to the center of the flowers, then layed a light book/object on top of each card overnight to help the flower and dew drop stay in place while the glue dried.

The flowers were fully set in the morning...and I was In Love on the big reveal. <3

I hope I have inspired you to make your own small works of art...just for the sheer joy of it...and remember, ATC's are for sharing! Anyone out there want to trade with me? Leave me a comment. :)

Happy Art Making,  Tristina

Got My R&F Paints Order and Submitted Artwork Today

I am sooooo excited! Today I both submitted artwork for ArtServe's (InSIDE)/Out Show and received my order of R&F Paints encaustic wax and oil stick paints. Here are pictures:

 The oil paint sticks fit nicely in the top drawer of my new paper chest on wheels from IKEA.

The box of squares in the right of the pic are encaustic wax bars.

This approx. 8x11 painting is done on a piece of reclaimed wood with a beautiful flower napkin in the background. The buddha I shot at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco last August as well as the image of the Tibetian scroll. Stamps are from Vietnam and were in keeping with the theme of tranquility. Name of the piece is "Prayer for Tranquility". 

Recognize this buddha? Yep, same picture as the one above, only I had it printed on a 24x30 canvas and I painted and collaged over the image. There's a big Swarovski crystal in the middle of his head! I wrote the Chinese characters and hand colored the paper on the right (I grew up in Taiwan and used to practice Chinese character writing in school!). Hair is covered in glass bead gel, which you can't really see from the picture. The name of the painting is "Serene Repose".

 I've been working all day on more artwork to be submitted to a Broward Art Guild gallery show at the Coral Springs Museum of Art tomorrow. I'll show you that work after they are submitted!

Spent a few moments today reading the May/June 2010 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine. It is so chock full of excellent ideas, even in the advertisements. I realized I never did finish reading all the articles. I'm so looking forward to what fun I'll learn in those last few articles!

Tristina :)

Submitted Today to Broward Art Guild Show

Wow! I was up till the wee hours last night finishing several pieces that I took today to submit to the Tri-County Art Show sponsored by the Broward Art Guild. Below are pics of the 5 pieces I submitted and some of the folks helping me to sign my pieces in, Nancy and Marlene.

"Serene Repose"

This is painted in acrylics over a photograph I took in San Francisco. I hand painted and colored the paper on the right. The dot in the middle of Buddha's forehead is a massive sparkly Swarovski crystal. Size 18x24

"Sunset Harbour"

I loved the way my acrylic hand colored paper came out, so I mounted it straight to canvas...very powerful. Size12x14

"Enchanted Forest"

My acrylic paint hand colored paper gave me the impression of light in the late afternoon playing between the trees. The trunks and leaves are textured acrylic. Size 16x20 See the detail below. 

"Mad Balloons"

Here my acrylic hand colored paper was punched out into circles and embedded in layers of encaustic wax. I love how bright and happy this piece is! Size 5x7 on wood panel.

Detail of the sides showing the wax drips is below.

"Daffodillia"

Another encaustic wax painting using a real US postage stamp and my own acrylic hand colored paper. There's lots of texture and depth in this one! Size 8x8 on wood panel.

Side view showing the wax drips is below.

The common thread among the artwork I submitted today is all have my acrylic hand colored paper in them somewhere...I hope at least one of my pieces is accepted for the show!

I have rarely seen encaustic wax paintings in Florida because the extreme heat can melt the wax, therefore encaustic paintings here have to be very carefully kept in cool temperatures and out of direct sunlight. It only takes 160 degrees or more to melt the wax, so no leaving them in the car either!

I have been reading a lot of the "Encaustic Art" book in an effort to have it done before I go up to R&F Paints this coming week to take a 3 day mixed media and oil paint stick workshop in Kingston, NY. R&F is famous for manufacturing a large line of encaustic wax paints and oil/wax paint sticks. I'm going to learn so much there! I'll be sure to share what happens there...

Tristina