Peculiar Paintings

Hello again 😊

So with my new year’s challenge in mind, I have been frantically trying to finish a painting each week and have produced 2 odd looking things…

I had had both of them on the go for a very long time but somehow had gotten either stuck or bored, I’m not sure which but both had ended up in the growing doom pile of unfinished work. I don’t know whether I really feel like either of them are finished enough, but I usually feel that way about my work, whatever it is, so, I’m calling them done anyway.

The first image in the heart frame was just made to fit the frame, which I found at a car boot sale and thought was cute as I’ve always loved anything heart shaped. It’s composed of a plastic sweet packet which I covered with tissue paper then burnt holes in, a twisty tie thing that might have been holding cables together at some point, some old beads, a washer with a pretty patina that I’ve just stuck on as it was rather than painting over it as I like it so much, some old cement and tile grout, and acrylic paint.

The second image seemed to take a ridiculous amount of time… lots of layers of paint on this, the colours were inspired by this bracelet that I found, also at a car boot sale:

There’s plenty of junk in this piece including a weird circular plastic thing I found on the pavement, (not a clue what it was for) a large stick-on rhinestone, a strange circular bead, some little balls from one of those silica gel packets (I often use these) some old cement and a baby wipe (which hadn’t been used for anything disgusting!)

I usually start by layering up the texture and then painting over the whole thing, and this one I was really happy with until I started painting it, then I struggled to get it looking as nice as the unpainted version, so I think that put me off finishing it. It also outgrew the frame I had planned for it, well the mount anyway- I kept adding more to the edges to try and balance it out a bit and then it didn’t look right within the aperture! So I will have to make a new mount.

I think they both look better in person, it’s quite difficult to capture all the detail and texture.

The plan for this week is to try and finish a commission that one of my colleagues asked me to do many months ago as I’ve taken way too long over it. It’s very colourful so I’m actually really looking forward to working on it and seeing what it becomes. I have a lot of other things happening and I’m going to be very busy but hopefully I will be posting it here next Sunday!