Can You Sea?

I am working on this painting for about a two weeks. I wanted to do a two layere piece with geometric shapes that showed the paint underneath.

I started first with a pig's hair brush. I painted highly textured vertical lines. I used a denim blue and sea foam green. I placed each color on opposite ends of the brush and lightly painted - the brush barely touching the canvas. Also, I heavily thinned the paint using Createx base.

After letting paint dry for half a day, I used common school glue and lightly poured the shapes I wanted. The school glue works great, but tends to spread out more than liquid wax. It's also harder to remove. Anyway, I gave the glue a good 24 hours to dry. I then painted over the the glue and the base color with an acrylic dark blue. I only lightly thinned the color with base. Again, I used a pig's hair brush to create texture, but used a full brush and heavy stroke upon the canvas. I painted vertical lines up and down until a fully covered the glue and base paint.

I waited another full day for the paint to dry and then carefully removed the glue. Sometimes, I had to use the dull edge of a butter knife to pop the glue off. I was surprised to see how much the glue had spread out, but it did maintain a tight seal and didn't let the second layer paint seep through.

On the other side, I painted a base teal green coat as the base layer. I used a good pigment acrylic paint - Winsor & Newton Galeria "Pale Olive". I wanted an academy level paint, because I knew I was going to put many layers of paint on top and did not want any separation.

I wanted to create a multicolor wavy effect. I used several different paints: Liquitex Bronze Yellow, Jo Sonja's Permanent Alizarine, Jo Sonja's Olive Green, Grumbacher Yellow Ochre Light, Dick Blick Raw Sienna, Folk Art Grass Green, Folk Art Pine Green, Apple Barrel Coffee Bean.

I drew verticle lines creating demension by apply a dark color first and the hightlighting that color with a lighter color. I continued this until the whole half was filled in.

So, as you can see I have created my pattern for the base layer. Now, to pour glue in the outlined shape of kelp and hope this structure looks like the textured plant. That is the plan ...

I am a little embarassed using Folk Art and Apple Barrel. Folk Art is a much better paint, but still both are only craft quality. The pigment color should not fade and the paint is from the USA so it doesn't contain lead. However, the pigment is not consistent and does not mix well with other paint. Dick Blick and Liquitex can be a little chunky - although the pigment color is pretty good.

Jo Sonja's, Grumbacher and Winsor are good acedemy grade paint. They have a smooth structure, consistent pigment count, mix well with other paint and maintain color and texture. But they're very expensive.

Anyway .. wish me luck