I love painting with different water-based media. But, when I want more texture I turn to acrylics. And there I stay (until I get a hankering to use watercolors or gouache). Also, sometimes I just want the paint to stay put, no bleeding or traveling across the painting surface in unexpected ways. I almost take it for granted that it has quick drying time, another big plus.

Let your style out

The first two paintings illustrate how much fun you can have painting free-form abstracts with acrylics. You can layer on colors in any order and as you do, the magic starts to happen. Quite often, I go for a whimsical feel to my art, a carefree and playful tone. In the two paintings below, it may look like I simply splashed color in a haphazard fashion, just dabbing and swishing dots, shapes and swirls with the brush, right? Not so. In “Buffalo Water”, I was thinking about traveling around a body of water. For some reason, I started painting on the left and moved to the right. It tickled me when the figure of a water buffalo took shape on the right.

By the way, when I’m finished with an abstract painting and sit back and review the results, I’m focused on whether there’s a good value balance, a focal point, and an interesting structure, to name a few key painting basics. The notion of making errors doesn’t occur to me in this style of painting. Except in knowing when to stop painting.

The play of light on moving objects in this abstract creates an etherial playground in “Merry-go-round”. This one is an ode to the gorgeous colors you can achieve with acrylics and how they make me feel.

At the other end of my style spectrum, is a tighter handling of the medium as in, “Artist’s grandson at Purlear, NC“. It was a beautiful day when we went for a hike on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’m always taking photos on any hike and came back with a reference photo to help get me going on this painting back in my studio. The focus on details and realism is dramatically different from the two abstracts above. I can paint in this style, but it’s not my preferred cup of tea. Even so, I love that this image captures the time when my grandson’s golden curls escaped from the top knot in his young “man-bun”.

You can just make out some of the texture in the painting. I reminds me that layering on paint to add texture is a huge way to transform your art. It’s an element I plan on exploring more of in the future. …