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| "Strictly Ornamental" 4" x 5" Acrylic on Archival Canvas Panel |
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
"Strictly Ornamental" - A Still Life of Christmas Ornaments
One of my goals for this year in my daily painting challenge is to learn and master as many textures as I am capable of, or at least get as close as I can to mastering them. Eventually, I would like to learn to paint glass, lace, silk, cotton, beads, water, droplets, and metal, among so many other things! The possibilities are seemingly endless, but here's one I've yet to do that I tried tonight - Christmas Ornament glass. It's so reflective not only because of the fact that it's glass, but also because of it's spherical shape. I know it probably seems a little late to be doing Christmas-y themed paintings, but these balls were still out so I decided, "what the hey, why not?" And so this is my very first attempt at painting colored glass ornaments, and I must admit, it is FAR harder than I thought it was going to be! I had to work in many layers, allowing the paint time to dry in between, and for some reason I never really quite achieved the color of red I was hoping for. That is definitely something I will have to figure out some other day, because that was quite frustrating. It's never fun to admit one's shortcomings, or come to realize what they are, and apparently I am not quite as good at achieving the exact colors I am striving for yet. But you know what? With practice, I know I'll be getting much better at this, and now that I know it's an issue, I can try to focus on it in my paintings even more from here on out. It definitely is making me debate working with a very limited palette soon!
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I find painting the glass ornaments frustrating too, because it's like a whole room painting in each ornament! You did really well, I think! Really, nice job!
ReplyDeleteNo kidding! But thank you so much Kyra! By the way, if anyone out there is reading this, you seriously need to check out Kyra's work. She's a phenomenal painter - my newest favorite for sure! Her blog is at http://kyraart.blogspot.com/ and her website is http://www.kwilsonstudio.com/, and she totally rocks out gorgeous whimsical paintings that I absolutely adore. My personal favorites are her Alice in Wonderland Series - they are freakin' gorgeous!!!
DeleteHave you thought of painting on the ornaments themselves? My Great-Grandmother did this and they are some of my favorite ornaments on the tree. -Veronica
ReplyDeleteOh yes, actually I have done some and absolutely love how they turn out! They can be quite tricky, partially because I use acrylic paint on glass and plastic, and the paint tends to lift at times, but also because of the simple fact that it's rather hard to paint on a spherical surface... But yes, I do plan on making more of those in the future, especially around Christmas-time next year so that I can sell some as well. And we still need to make this years footprint and hand-print ornaments of baby Owie for our tree and for our family's trees, because I just love having those to display each year and the one's we made of Levi were awesome!
DeleteJust a silly little side-note, I painted two glass ornaments for a white-elephant ornament party a few years back, and one of them (it was of a baby penguin in the snow) was such a hit by everyone that it became quite the fight to get it. It was pretty awesome for my ego! Lol! =D