Splish Splash Splosh Moving on to a new photography project. It's a very short project, looking at painted marks and residue of paint in Limerick. Here are examples from adventures in the rain with my camera.

This one is my personal favourite it has so many qualities that i like.

This was an exercise in glazes for my self,  I had sized and then primed board with two coats f gesso. the glazes were in parts stand oil, and other parts linseed oil, i want to see what they look like when dry. Then I was interested in the repelling quality of paint so i mixed up a little paint with turps and splattered it in a concentrated area. Next experiment was to add more runny mix with linseed oil, in the image below

I used a couple of colours and placed then with linseed oil to run down the painting, it doesn't happen instantly, but the great effect you get when the paint thins and runs in varying degrees, with the colours coming through this really enhances the interest and glazes. I also learnt that if you intend to have transparent glaze in your work it is very important to get a really smooth finish on your gesso, this was an experiment, using the oil and medium, but for the future i would spend more time on my support in the first place

I am still experimenting with the effects of oil and water based paint, I took some acrylic thinly mixed, then added some oil mixed with turps and combined the two on the board in varying degrees, initially looked good but dries disappointing. Then I painted some oil on the background and wiped off the excess to leave a staining faintly on the board. My next layer I sprayed paint on to parts of the work, then worked into it with a brush

Although it doesn't dry the way it first appears there are still some crackle effects that interest me.

For me the piece isn't working but I may try another form of this crackling and paint repelling to see if it can be improved with a different consistency 

Here I built up layers, to see the combined effects of sprays and oil paint together, first I used a layer of spray paint to create background interest and atmosphere. then I did layers of oil paint. Finally on the left side i did a concentrated area of spray, using similar colours to see how they would react. I found the combination worked well rather harmonious.

Based on the thorns and tangles of a blackberry bush, I primed paper with rabbit skin glue, and used oil mixed with stand oil, 

This time I applied the oil paint thickly, with some dammer varnish in parts.

Started new oil painting project, very interested in the different effects that various mediums produce. I am going to experiment to see what happens. First I primed card with gesso, then used oil paints thinned with turps and some linseed oil on parts. Then I added some splatter of metallic acrylic paint.
The colours in this image are not as vivid as in reality.

I learnt a lot from this work, I tried mixing a few mediums and put them next to each other to see what they looked like and how they appeared as they dried. I revisited the painting several times, as I think it still needs more but its time to move on to further experiments

Damien Flood gave us some text from The Tropic of Cancer, from which we were to take inspiration to  paint. I loved this idea, and the imagery that comes to mind from this text, shame we only had two weeks for this, as there is so much that we could have done.

For my next support I recycled the side of an old cooker, to see how the spray paints would react on both the shiny white side, which is the image at the top, and then the raw metal side, on the image at the bottom. On the bottom the metal seem to absorb more paint and give it a darker more sinister quality.

I decided to bring part of my original installation to display next to the above work, originally I was going to leave the wood natural and paint the base to combine the two pieces. While painting I got so absorbed that I painted the entire 3d work.

The inspiration from the installation for Shadowland Needle and the end work together. I have one last experiment to do, I am going to take the 3d work outside to see how its looks next to the trees. Great photos,could lead to some more potential for the future.

I decided to revisit these pieces on stainless steel as I felt they needed more colour and texture

I decided to progress my idea of looking through the needles and branches, by not only looking through but by using a mirror as my support, the viewers reflection would change my work as they move and interact with it.

I wanted to see how this piece looked on its own in a different space. 

The top photos are a progression of my idea of looking through. I applied paint to glass which was then scraped and blown in to, when nearly dry another piece of glass was squashed on to the paint while still tacky, next on the top of the glass I drew in coloured ink, and photographed it with light shining through and close up images. The bottom two photos I sprayed paint on to brushed stainless steel for a standing 3d work, I will probably re-work this piece as I feel it is missing something.

Top photo is acrylic on board in response to the shadow forms through the needles, I didn't feel this was very successful, so next I tried sprays on card, this interested me and I decided to work further on this piece with inks, blowing and drawing them. The fourth photo shows a work on polystyrene with acrylic medium and wire mesh in layers. The last piece is on ceramic tile and I drew with wire and scraped some paint of to create motion and shadow.