"Moonlight" - 18" x 18" Acrylic Painting Progress

Here are some in progress photos of my latest piece, "Moonlight" which I started on September 28, 2014 and finished on November 27, 2014.

I didn't have an agenda for this piece as far as the subject when I started, but I did want to stick with a limited color palette. I tend to thrown a lot of color on my pieces (which I love, obviously) but this was a way to challenge myself and see what would come.

My limited palette

About halfway through, I walked into my art room with the lights off, so the only light coming in was pre-sunrise glow. It was then that I saw the swan and I went from there.

I'm thrilled with the results. This is 18" x 18" piece on 2" deep canvas with sides painted red. That doesn't show up in these images, but it adds a nice finishing touch.

This is when I saw the swan and decided the direction to take it.

After I decided on the swan, I got started on the body and other details. 

I created more contrast, added more branch imagery and played with movement and flow.

The finished piece with refined details and repeating dot pattern

I hope you enjoyed seeing my process with this piece. I'm smitten with it and look forward to more limited palette painting.

Expressing my Inner Jackson Pollock

A.K.A Making a Mess:

I was in a "smear a bunch of thick paint on a canvas" mood then followed it up with a "how about flinging some paint" mood.

This is what I like to call the Full Of Possibilities stage.

Oh who am I kidding? This is just me making a mess. It's fun; you should try it some time!

Evolution of a Face

One of the things I've heard from multiple artists is to use any leftover paint from one project and just slap it on a blank canvas, avoiding waste and getting a jumps start on your next canvas. This painting started out as one of those leftover paint canvases.

I don't have any photos of the origins of this painting, but it started out with some light blue, smears of bright yellow-green, various black swirly marks and random other bits of color. At that point, I kind of saw a face in the marks and quickly painted the outline and the hair line. I had leftover fluid acrylics in violet and turquoise, so those were added and I decided to run them with a couple spritz of water.

Which brings us here:


I added some shading on her neck, roughed in her features, and darkened the area behind her head on the right. I showed this to my husband, and he thought she looked a bit like Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, so the next day, when I came back to the painting, I decided to give her bright orange hair.



I didn't like the placement of her nose, so I covered over the mark I'd made. I worked on her eyes and added various layers of red, orange, yellow and some magenta to her hair. I also swirled some violet in there as well. I took a spray bottle top, pushed it into her hair to pick up paint, and made the circle marks you see in the corners.

I was really liking where she was going, but went out of town for a few days so she sat about a week at this stage. When I got back from my trip (an art workshop I'll write about later), I was itching to paint again, so on Monday night, I decided to finish her up or at least come close.



I worked on defining her eyes, adding lots of shading to her face to bring out the features, added to her hair and decided to go with swirls. Lots of layering, little touches here and there and I decided to call her finished. I'm thrilled with how she turned out. It's my favorite painting to date. I just keep staring at her, hardly believing that *I* made her.