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 :)

Starting a Painting

Over the last three years, I have been learning a lot about painting. As a self-taught artist, its been a steep learning curve starting with the most basic stuff on mixing colors to refining my techniques. And to top it all off, I had to learn how to properly finish a painting from Etsy! (more on this later).

Most of my paintings are done with acrylics on canvas and here is a quick look on how I do it and how I learned to do what I do. 

• Step one is do a ground layer on the canvas. I prefer a very light yellow as the grounding background on my paintings. There has been times when I have skipped this step, started out with the colors I want for the background and regretted it. Using this grounding layer helps cover up missed spots later on, especially when there is only a thin layer of paint. In many instances, the ground layer would still show through, but be part of the background and add more depth to it.

• Step 2 is doing the actual background. I have started to play more with my background colors than doing my basic stuff. My usual basics is doing a blend of tones of the same color with a mottled look (that might disappear once the painting is complete).

An octopus I am just starting today 

• Step 3 is sketching out the subject. I start with a charcoal pencil for the initial sketch. I have learned the hard way about erasing the sketch lines after the painting is complete. Charcoal seems to be the most easiest to get rid off. 

• Step 4 for me is to sort-of finalize the outline using a marker, usually black or brown. It is ok if there are small errors here, as the next step of filling in the subject can correct those. 

In my next post, I will write more progress steps and photos, as I work through this octopus!

Going Pro

I am doing a little fund raiser on IndieGoGo to take my art to the next level: Next summer, I want to hit the professional art festivals in the mid-west including Madison's Art Fair on the Square. I need your help and support for getting there. Please check out my campaign by clicking the link below, contribute whatever you can and help me spread the word about my works. And I have some wonderful perks for you along the way. In case you are new to my works, please check out my facebook page and mywebsite. 

Ready to Fly

Fawkes, the Phoenix is one of my latest paintings, completed just 3 weeks back for my show at the Yahara Bay Distillery. And with this show, I reached another milestone in my art career - I have sold 100+ paintings since Feb 2012. It feels such an accomplishment for someone who is not trained as an artist. It was also great to see all my friends who have been encouraging me down this career path since day 1 at the reception. It was a great evening. The show runs for two more week at The Gallery at Yahara Bay.

 

In Need Of...

a title... Here is one of the latest Kolam paintings I finished today. Beautiful Blues with a little bit of black and gold. I have asked my wonderful fans on facebook to help me come up with a title and  one will get chosen by the end of the day on Monday, July 1. The fan who comes up with the title will get a print of the painting! Win, win!!!

 

Notecards and Prints

A few months back, I got one of my paintings printed as notecards by a local company. Though they did a very good job, I was not happy with the way my colors was showing up in regular print. Since then, I have printed glossy photos of my artwork and create blank notecards with them. I am for now, selling the prints only at summer fairs. Even the cards seem to do so well in those events. Here is a list of events you can find us this summer.

Henna style Abstract Paintings

Modern Abstract Ganesh Paintings

Henna style Animal Paintings

Textured Mandala Paintings

Chakra Series Paintigns

Summer Fairs

Spring is almost here and summer will be upon us soon and with summer comes all the wonderful summer fairs. This year I am planning to do more events than I did last year! And the month of May is already looking to be pretty busy and I am starting to paint a lot, both large and small pieces in preparing to be ready for the summer events. Here is a series of small works I am doing for the summer shows - all of these are on 6" x 6", Textured acrylics on canvas. Sides are painted the same background colors and the right & left ones have patterns. These definitely add a little extra color to one's space!