Sunday, November 14, 2010

Wax museum

At the high school, we have a heat gun that blows really hot air. You can use it to melt wax like crayons and such. I have been playing around with it and I love melting wax! As a kid I think I got crayons for christmas ten years in a row. I wish I had all of them now to melt and make things out of. I've made these two things so far:

On both I used a sharpie to go back and outline all the cool swirls that happened. The second one I went over it with watercolor.


Sunday, November 7, 2010

Transfers

In student teaching, I've taught the students how to do gesso and gloss/varnish transfers. I made some examples to show the class and am really LOVING doing transfers. It is SOOO fun and easy. If you yourself would like to do a gesso transfer, there are lots of online tutorials on how to do it. This next painting is acrylic. I started with a gesso transfer as the ground base and painted over it. I'm still going to paint some more, it's not totally finished. The assignment I gave the students was to paint a memory. This is my memory.
Treehouse, Acrylic on board, 11" x 14"

This image makes the transfer above look really crappy cause of the reflection. But it's actually really cool! Instead of having white behind your image, if you use acrylic gloss medium and varnish, it will dry clear! The saying "happiness is a journey, not a destination" has been on my mind a lot and I wanted a place to see it all the time. I'm all about being happy now and not waiting til some other stage of your life to be happy.

The above painting is having some growing pains. I love it but also am struggling with it. My husband is not fond of the colors, which happens to be my favorite part. I'm not sure what to do it. Any suggestions? I notice now that all of my paintings have that BRIGHT blue. I just love it. After living in the caribbean blue waters for a year and a half, I just really really love that color. I reminds me of good people and the most beautiful places on earth.