Wednesday, February 19, 2014

A move and A Task

We moved to the suburbs of Chicago last week and the move was uneventful. However, the daunting task of unpacking awaits. We have downsized quite a bit and now the second bedroom is going to be my studio space. However it is filled with boxes from the office, guest bedroom, studio, rest of basement and the garage from the old house. I have started unpacking but it surely is going very slow! 


I was able to buy three new tables for the studio space before leaving Madison, in lieu of the counters I had in my previous one. Hoping to have a functional studio space here in the next week. 


Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Progress on a Painting

In my last post I wrote about the steps in starting a painting. Today, its about the progress on the piece. 

Step 5: Filling in the outline. Usually I prefer to do this with one solid color if its an animal I am working on. I do dab on the paint thick in this step as I don't want to do multiple coats in small areas.


Step 6: The most tedious and fun step in the painting. Doing the textured lines. I love to use metallic gold and silver for the texture and use them as much as I can. I bring in more variety to the patterns here and also get to play with the thickness of the textured lines. I start in the middle and move my way out on the subject.


Step 6: Accents - in the octopus I used white dots around the animal to sort of give a relief and also used some metallic green dots in the background. 

Step 7: One of the most satisfying steps - signing my name! I actually write my name in Tamil, my mother tongue in the front. 

Step 8: Remove all pencil marks, correct mistakes. 

Step 9: Seal: I use a gloss or high gloss varnish to seal the painting. I usually do just one coat.

Step 10: Paint the sides black with black gesso. Steps 9 & 10 are something I learnt from people selling paintings on Etsy. I am so glad to have found these two steps that make my paintings look well finished and ready to hang. 

Step 11: After its completely dry, I put a hanger in the back, and with a sharpie write my name& website, sign in english with the year.

Now, its ready to go on FB and list for sale on my website :)