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Get Your Paint On: Week One



I had such a wonderful time with the Get Your Paint On prompt this week. The inspiration was Gee's Bend quilters of Alabama. I decided to follow the prompt in encaustics rather than acrylics because I still feel like I have so much to learn and practice with the medium...and the hot palette warms up the studio nicely. Cheers to higher electric bills!



This is the first painting I did. I wanted nice straight lines and figured I should practice masking with tape and wax anyway. I like it, but it feels very rigid and technical.



For the second painting I decided to dive in and plunge through all my fears of messing it up and hating it. I just started applying the wax in as straight lines as I could, which were not very straight at all. I've also been really struggling with my color choices. So I stuck to the colors I mixed last week and kept playing. After getting the messy pattern and blocks down I used incising (scraping) along a ruler to draw the nice straight lines that I couldn't get with just the wax and brush. I almost filled the lines with white paint but then decided on mixing a teal instead. I'm glad I went with the teal. Part of my plan to make my colors work has been to be more monochromatic but the teal actually worked. I also scraped down some layers to reveal small amounts of bolder colors that I had partially covered to tone it down. And I think it works. So I was very pleased.

growing home (6"x6" encaustic)

Friday night I also finished a home painting that I had started. Over the last year I have been using a little home as a metaphor for my sense of self, symbolizing both my struggle to find safety and acceptance there and security and retreat from the world around me. Most of the home paintings come from my not-happy feelings and experiences, but this painting represents a sense of growth within myself. Some long-awaited seeds have begun growing in my life and it feels good. It is a hopeful painting and I like it.

Thank you Mati and Lisa for a great first week. I just want to continue forever and ever! Excited to see what tomorrow's prompt is.

Get Your Paint On: Week Two

Sparks