Mayan Gods

The story of this painting is pretty long. It started out with a transfer of the images and then I tried to add some encaustic in the shape of tiles. The tiles looked pretty cool, but I know now, I should measure to be sure I have them straight. The color was not quite right and the gods did not show, so I decided to melt the whole thing down, start over with texture and had to draw the gods in with my brush. Anyway I think this is much more my style, so I will try encaustic tiles another time. Texture, amate paper, acrylic, oil on MDF board. 20X20
Technorati Tags:Mayan Gods, acrylic, encaustic

Habanero Peppers

I have seen so many nice, painting a day blogs, with small paintings that you can't help but want to give them a try also. I have never really painted just oil and I really like the feel of it after using texture on almost all of my paintings. This is another very small one 4X6.
Yechnorati Tags:habanero peppers, oil, texture

Petroglyphs

I have been short on words lately but life has been busy this week. I hope to get down to reading all of the wonderful blogs I visit tomorrow, and try another little still life.. In the meantime this is my latest piece. Encaustic, wall texturizer, acrylic, oil and gold leaf on MDF board. 20X20
Technorati tags: petroglyphs, encaustic, still life

A small still life

For a change and some practice using just oil this week, I thought I would paint a still life. Life has been busy but I hope to catch up with my blog and other blogs starting tomorrow.

Vestige IV

This week has been a little dry for me, art wise. I have to get back to the swing of things and try to post more often. Sometimes I work on a painting so much and the result is just not what I wanted. I have another painting drying at the moment and hope to post it tomorrow.

Farewell

Twenty three years ago my husband and I bought an old run down Hacienda at a ridiculous price. Situated 40 min. to the south of our home in the city, in a beautiful mezquite valley and surrounded by rolling hills. It was so run down that I couldn't see anything pretty about it as it's grandeur was hidden by rubble and mondern day patches, here and there. Through the years, with love and constant work we were able to turn it into something truly unique. It became our weekend home, a place to socialize with friends, the home for one of our sons while he started the cattle business and the place where our youngest son was married last year. Today, I went out to pick up some things and as we left, my husband closed the gates behind him, for the last time. As beautiful and loved as the place is, it was becoming a financial and physical burden for the two of us. Our sons are all busy with their work and lives and our plans of turning it into a Bed & Breakfast, were far from becoming true, since it is in the middle of nowhere and the people we would like to cater to, might not find much to be entertained by, except maybe, hiking. Fortunately a buyer showed up at the perfect time and the whole negociation happened so quickly, I had no time to sulk about it. Mixed feelings I do have, but now I can turn the direction and do things on the weekends I have not done for twenty three years.

We have kept our cattle land and cattle that are very close to this place, so now we will see it from the distance, whenever we go out there. The people that bought it said they will not change a thing and leave it decorated as it is. There is a sort of mystery, spirituality and energy that I hope will prevail and will give it's new dwellers the serenity it gave me.

Technorati Tags: Hacienda, mezquite, spirituality, cattle

Still struggling

I think this will be my last try with this. It shows I have been out of practice with encaustics. The black was too much and now it is very busy but the only thing to do to fix it, would be to melt it all down. I'll leave it for a couple of days and see if it grows on me.

Same encaustic, revisited

I wasn't completely satisfied with the encaustic last night so I decided to do a little work on it.

New Encaustic

I haven't done one of these for over a year and I think I went overboard with the amount of wax and pigments. I can't get the wax bars here so I buy pure beeswax from the beekeepers and mix dry pigments into the molten wax I keep in small jello cups. I have heard you are not supposed to use encaustic over acrylic but I have done it before with out any problem and it adds depth to the whole piece. In this case I didn't and I poured my pigmented wax directly over the MDF board. Unfortunately my red mixed with the black and got a little muddy. I used a hotgun to fuse everything and I will have to wait a little to be able to buff it. In the meantime I have another wall textured one, waiting to be sanded and worked on tomorrow. Technorati tags:encaustic, beeswax, acrylic, pigments

What next?

I am still playing around with textures and colors but this will be my last piece of this size and I hope to start a bigger size with a little more serious work on it. This is another recycled piece. It started with a still life over gold leaf but I ruined it by adding some burlap to it. After taking the burlap off the only solution left, was the wall texturizer to cover with. I had covered it weeks ago and now that I decide to brush some paint over it I found those scratchy indentations but don't find them disturbing so I will leave them.

I was discussing intuitive abstract art with another abstract artist. It is so hard for me to reason with abstracts because then I freeze and connot produce anything. I know a lot of people abtract from reality but it is something I cannot do.
Technorati Tags:gold leaf, abstract, intuition

Earth Again!

I have been quite absent from my blog this week but I just got back from a trip to McAllen, Texas. My husband bought me a very, far in advance, birthday present but we probably won't get up there again before the end of the year. He bought me a Nikon D50 Digital Camera. The shutter speed is so much faster than the Canon Power-Shot I have. Hope this will improve the quality of the pictures I take of my paintings. I haven't been able to do much painting either since my two grandsons are visiting from Sonora. Although, I did get a quick experimental painting in this afternoon and hope to get some larger one's done this week.

Technorati Tags: Texas, Camera, Nikon, Sonora

Two of Three

This is the second painting working in the same way I did the previous one of my pour series. I feel that these are too dark but I had to continue with the color palette since I plan to group these. I will have to find a way for the ink to keep it's original bright color. After these three I wiil try with a lighter background and hope the ink reacts differently. The top image is a close up fragment.

Close up of pour 1

closeup pour 1, originally uploaded by marianuch.

Group of three

Pour 1, originally uploaded by marianuch.

The pervious pour paintings I have posted are still not what I wanted them to be so I am still trying and covering up. I think this one is a little closer to what I want although I would like the brighter color to be more intense. This would be the ink in this one and I feel that it breaks down as it combines with the acrylic. This looks much better in real life because the there is so much going on in it that is not visible on the screen and there is an iridescent glow to it. It is acrylic, acylic ink and pigmented sand on MDF board. My idea is to group three of these in one paintng but with a box frame for each that will only hold the paintings but no decorate them.
Technorati tags:paintings, ink, sand, MDF

The Weekly Drawing thread

for flicker, originally uploaded by marianuch.

The Weekly Drawing Thread

Three years ago I came across Wet Canvas. I began to hang around the Mixed Media forum but my desire to learn to draw took me to the Drawing and Sketching forum. There I came across the Weekly Drawing Thread hosted by Stoy Jones at that time. I don'y know if he was the creator of the thread. I was very afraid to post my first drawing but with the excellent critique and kindness of Stoy Jones, Dee, JayD, alfredart, mcbecket and others, I soon felt welcome in the thread. I don't always have time to do the weekly drawing but it is something I am always looking forward too every Sunday evening. I believe it is an excellent way to keep the drawing practice, active.

This is this weeks drawing.

Technorati tags: drawing, sketching, critique

Mango again!

Mango again!, originally uploaded by marianuch.

I think this will enter as another post because I am posting the image from Flicker since I am still having trouble with the image uploader.

Mango again!

Today has been another one of those frustrating days where you think you have a fabulous idea, you work on it for hours, think it is finished, take a picture of it, put it up on your screen and you find that is is a total disaster. I had the brilliant idea of using my leaf and acorn drawing to collage into a geometric abstract but chose the wrong color and also realized that geometric forms are not my thing. I have painted around it in black and poured a gold and ochre oil pour over it. I hope that by morning it will dry and be decent enough for me to post.

That said I will post Mango again after having a stressful business meeting.

Technorati tage:geometric,leaf, cat

Pour Series II

I haven't been able to post anything for my blog because the image uploader has not wanted to work for me. I will try again and see if I'm lucky this time.

Now it seems the page is not found so it might be the blogger and not specifically my blog.

Pour Series

I started a series yesterday titled earth series, due to the first that made me think of this but after finishing this one it really doesn't look like earth, it looks more like sky so I will just call it, Pour Series. I am a little disappointed because it doesn't like it looked before it dried and I think the secret is to let the top pour dry a little before adding the squirt of ink. The red you see in this is red acrylic ink and when I squirted it into the wet pour it was fascinating to see how the threads of red ink spread out like veins of color through the blue and black pour. I am posting two of these. In the first one I added tissue paper for texture but I believe they look better without the texture, except for the granules of sand I sprinkle in, before it dries. They are both acrylic, acrylic ink and pigmented sand on masonite board, 16X16. My intention was to group these as one whole piece, now it depends on what the outcome will be of the two remaining surfaces I have to work with.
Technorati Tags: earth, ink, masonite, red