I’m Calling You

 

I have been wanting to use more kinds of media in my work to give it more interest and texture.  In this piece, I used liquid inks, pencils and oils.

I have decided to focus on getting better values in my paintings.  Values (or tones) are the darks and lights in a painting.  Not so much the colors, as their values. For instance, a highly saturated yellow can have a dark value in a painting.

I was dismayed when I first learned this about value.  I love to use really bright colors.  But doing that in the painting means that the painting won’t have much depth.  If you don’t have much depth, you usually don’t have much of a painting.

So, what’s a girl like me to do?  I have had to tone down my colors.  I looked to the Impressionists.  They have incredibly bright paintings, or so it would seem.  However, many of them used greys in their paintings to make their other colors look bright.

Right now, in my paintings using grey is just not something I’m up for.  So I started adding highly saturated colors that also contained a lot of white.  That way, I can get better values going in my paintings.

I’ve been working with a new category of brushes in Painter, the app I use.  They are called liquid inks.  Painter has a category for regular inks, but liquid inks are a whole other thing.  

This fall, for the first time, I started using liquid inks.  They are runny and act just like real inks straight out of the bottle.  I had explored the liquid inks that come with Painter, and had been under-impressed.  However, I found some fabulous liquid ink brushes over at Skip Allen’s blog.  A great thing about Skip Allen’s blog is that he gives away his Painter brushes for free.  Please note, you should donate if you nab a lot of his brushes.  You can get to Skip’s blog by clicking here.

Skip has two categories of liquid ink brushes.  A sort of basic set called Inkspiration and another, very interesting category called Skip’s Liquid Ink.  I did a few dream catchers with Skip’s liquid inks, and loved them.

Liquid inks work on their own layer.  The liquid ink layer has its own properties which can make them a bit overwhelming to work with. However, I used liquid ink brushes without knowing about the layer attributes, as they are called, and they worked just fine.

I decided to try some in this abstract.  I laid them down using three or four colors close to each other on the color wheel so I got a nice gradient.

I changed some of the brush settings and added jitter to the brush to make the colors blend together better.

I dropped the liquid ink layers down to the canvas and then just incorporated them into my painting.  I don’t know if you can see in this abstract, but they do give the painting some texture.  I got a little over-anxious and kind of over worked the liquid inks with the paint.

I also used some new pencils that I made during a recent class at the DAA (Digital Art Academy). 

I really liked adding the pencils into my abstracts. It adds a new dimension to my paintings.  I’m continuing to use them in my abstracts.

As usual, I had a lot of fun working on this abstract.  However, after I posted this painting at Facebook, someone said she could see ET in it.  Ugh.  Now, I see him too.  I’m thinking I need to go back and rework that area.