>Newspaper Clouds

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Yesterday, I happened to be at a bookstore where I found a title called 30-minute ART: Acrylics by Soraya French. It was written for aspiring artists, hobbyists, and art lovers. It demonstrates how to create beautiful acrylic paintings in 30-minutes or less. The author's paintings are vibrant and they demonstrate a wide variety of techniques while maintaining the same style of work. This inspired me to work on my painting a bit more, although I will say I worked on it for more than 30-minutes! :o

One thing I am learning about my own painting style is that I enjoy the watercolour technique. I like to mix paint with quite a bit of water and do a series of washes over the canvas in several different colours until I achieve the desired look. Last night, I began with a bright green and painted most of the canvas like this.

Also mentioned in Soraya's book is how to create texture by adding simple collage. I have been incorporating collage in my work for awhile now. For my beaded White House painting, I cut out several newspaper clouds from a Boston Globe and added them to the canvas using an acrylic matte medium. Once the clouds were dry, I painted colour over them.

The newspaper clouds are cut out of several different articles. So far, topics range from the United States' relations with Cuba to terrorism to the current economic situation. And, to add to the storm, the last cloud on the far right of the canvas mentions that "the prospect of no-newspaper towns is looming". While Americans look at the White House differently these days, we cannot ignore the issues that seem to have brought on so many months of gray skies.

Semi-beaded White House relief painting. 24" x 36". Bead embroidery mounted on an oval stretched canvas. Work in progress.

My bead-painting is still a work in progress, but my vision is finally starting to come to life, and when it is complete, it will truly be a mixed media work of art. :D