In the summer, I move my studio to the garage, open up the large garage doors and try to paint what I see outside those doors.
This summer I’ve mostly been working in oils with cold wax medium creating small 8 x 10 field studies that I’ll later turn into larger studio paintings. Those field studies are small sections of the landscape as seen from my garage!
Today, I moved a little further down the driveway to create with a medium I haven’t used recently. During this hot, humid summer, my printmaking paper would misbehave. I use the paper dry so the weather made the paper damp and that forced the paper to bend and curl at will. Not easy to keep a print registered as you add multiple layers to the design.
But today it’s cool and the air is dry and I brought out my GelliArts printmaking plate, my registration board and my Golden Open Acrylics. As I mentioned, the scene is a view from the end of my driveway. I simply sketched a few versions of how I wanted the landscape to appear then went back to the garage to to create the monoprint.
I used the 6″ x 6″ GelliArts plate to create this design and the following Golden Open Acrylics – Titanium White, Indian Yellow Hue, Manganese Blue and Light Ultramarine Blue. And I used lots, and lots of low-tack painters tape to protect areas while I added color. I started with an overall yellow background applied to the plate with a brayer. Every other color was added with a paintbrush. The initial treeline color was the light ultramarine straight out of the tube. The rest of the colors were mixes of yellow, manganese blue and white. I finished the piece in almost 12 color layers.
Now that the weather has cooled a bit (and temporarily it appears) I have a few more sketches ready to go. This one is called “Someday Soon”; 6″ x 6″, matted to 12″ x 12″.