Resined Wildflowers

I’ve been making art for about ten years now. To say it’s been an evolution is an understatement. What I make changes so very much, and sometimes often!! I’ve never done a great job with painting specific things that exist in real life, so when I found an online class (https://www.amandaevanstonlearning.com) to take where I would learn to make beautiful abstract-ish flowers, I was all over it. I took the class and already bought a second one.

I continue to apply what I learned in the first class to what I make, but I still like to use the class (and instagram videos which is where I learned about these wildflowers) as an influence and not replace my own style with it. This group of poppies / wildflowers seems to do that as a mix of the abstract flower style and my glass / resin style.

The paintings were a commission to be given as teacher appreciation gifts. 16 of them!! They are on 3×9 wood panels and are coated with resin including some glass accents. You can see the reflection of the resin in the shiny pictures. For this group, I lined up all 16 then painted them like one big paintings. You could consider the 16 of them together as a puzzle :).

Making a Textured Painting

I didn’t want to call this a How To since there are so many ways I have already learned to use texture with my paintings.  This one is a little bit new, and it’s an adaptation of something I read somewhere, someone else’s how to.

I started this one with an 8×10 canvas.  Applied a coat of gesso, using my new favorite palette knife, a long flat one.  After letting the gesso dry, I used modeling paste and applied a couple of patterns to the canvas.

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This one had to dry overnight.  Seemed like the modeling paste needed loads more time to dry compared to other textures.  I picked orange and gray as my main colors, so I painted my first layer as gray, covering the stenciled areas as well as the sides and all surfaces.  Then I painted a layer of a combination of raw sienna and yellow oxide which made an dark yellow/orange color.  I used my palette knife for this color which meant that the crevices on the stenciled areas did not always get any of this color.

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The next layer I used was a crackling solution.  It is meant for latex paint, but I figured I would give it a try, and it seemed to work out.  I left this one to dry for about two hours, and it looked super shiny, but after two hours or so, it was not wet.

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Applying the coat on top of the crackle is the hard part.  You have to do this in one move or it will mess the crackling effect up.  I mixed my gray paint, making sure I had enough of it, then used my palette knife to spread it over the entire surface.  I made sure to not go back over any of it, and applied it as thick as it came out.  I let this sit overnight before doing anything else with it.

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At this point, I considered my canvas nearly perfect.  The next step was to apply an image on top of the background I had created.  I chose a fleur de lis. I used a stencil (you can buy plastic and make your own or buy pre-made stencils), put it in the spot I wanted, then applied modeling paste making sure to only get the paste in the open area of the stencil.  I didn’t mix any paint in with the modeling paste, but if i had to do it over again, I would have.  Once the modeling paste dried (let it dry overnight), I painted it with a smaller palette knife and applied different thicknesses to it.  Once that dried, I sprayed a coat of glossy varnish and let it dry.

The finished product (which I love):

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This painting is currently listed for sale in my etsy shop (Acrylic Paintings):

dlynnart.etsy.com