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I am often asked what inspires my visual ideas. They usually begin with an emotion that everyone is feeling that I feel compelled to express in my own way. The last three years I have been portraying people in a realistic style, but putting them in a better more inspiring world.  Sometimes that idea demands combining the abstract with reality, and using a variety of media. Oil and water don't mix, so keeping my oil painting separate from the use of water based acrylics is a process, and doing each step in a logical progression is important. 

I work out my ideas on days when painting is not possible. Over the years I have assembled a vast library of images in my computer labeled with the model's name, poses and potential backgrounds. I intuitively combine them in as many as 20 visual sketches to enhance my concept. Once I start to work with the art materials the painting takes on a life of its own.

My idea for Broken Flowers came from one of several emotional poses that I directed my model to take. I realized that the fallen flowers from an indoor plant would be a lovely combination to express emotion by contrasting my model's feelings within a wall representing a different world. I experimented first on a gold and silver leaf covered art board with a variety of techniques to choose the way forward. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but I made a list of steps to best use my materials to achieve the final result. 

In Step One I drew and painted an oil version of the portrait. Then I held each dried flower in my hand and did a loose palette knife rendering of the flowers. I needed to do that to break the smooth surface of the cradled board and also break myself loose from my preconceived expectations. In art we always look for the "Happy Accident".

Step Two involved painting the acrylic background for the gold leaf and applying it along the bottom half of the painting for the wall of flowers. I used a variety of techniques to achieve colorless texture over the gold leaf  by impressing shapes of leaves and pods with an empty paintbrush in wet Acrylic Gloss Medium. Then a combination of Acrylic Jenkins Green and Alizarin in varying proportions was mixed with glazing medium and painted in transparent sections on the gold leaf. I quickly established a flow of branches with a rubber tipped device enhancing them by wiping away with crumbled paper and incising into the wet colored paint. I worked in transparent layers, gradually building my image and allowing each layer to dry before continuing. 

The third step was to repaint and correct the face and flowers in oil paint, being careful not to let the oils crawl into the space allotted for the gold leaf. I redefined edges, realigned the eyes, corrected the portrait, added texture to the hair and reglazed parts of the flowers changing the colors to a warmer color cast on both face and flowers. 

My final step was to add the gold leaf at the top. To ensure the oil paint was thoroughly dry it was covered with tracing paper to isolate it. Any tiny bit of gold will cling to a tacky spot and would have to be scraped away ruining the oil painting below. I use Dux Water Based Size, wait a minimum of 35 minutes and apply the gold leaf using wax paper to float it over the size. I prefer "perfectly imperfect" effects so if I make a mistake I embrace it- Way less stress that way! Here is the final version of Broken Flowers. 

I hope you have enjoyed seeing my Mixed Media process and encourage all creatives to try mixing it up with your mediums. It is great fun when its not frustrating! Please feel free to comment and share this blog with anyone that might be interested. You are welcome to click on the link at the top of my Homepage to join my monthly Newsletter. I am looking forward to your questions and thoughts!