Palettes

I think I've tried them all at some point. None of them have stuck.  Ive never gone back to using any of these except the last one (which I'm not sure is an actual palette). Now this post may sound a little rant-like but bear with me! 

1. Glass palettes 

Artist's love these and I really don't get it! They are easy to clean and you can change the backing to make it perfectly 'clean'. But since I work with large formats (usually) and on the floor, I need it to be more portable and convenient than a glass palette can be! They are too heavy and unwieldy for me to keep moving around or even rest of my painting. 

2. Wax Paper or Tear Away Palettes

You know, they come in a pack and you basically rip off the pallete and throw it away. Ok, I used these for a while cause I had so many, but once again they didn't stick. They work well for just paint but when I mix in mediums and thinners, they tend to run over the edge or merge. Which leads to disaster as I tend to put my canvas on the dry section of my painting!

3. Wooden and Plastic Palletes  

Every artist started with one of those plastic palletes! The ones with the little wells and thumb hole. And of course, the more traditional wooden ones. I really love these for one reason: they keep a piece of each painting. But eventually this turns into a con! I've had palletes that became so caked in paint that they were entirely unusable. And I'd rather not keep spending money on palletes  

4. But finally! I found the right one! It's cardboard. Literally cut up pieces of packaging. I know it sounds ridiculous but not only is it cheap it works so well. You can cut out the size you want, shape it to hold more fluid mediums and in the end if you love the colors you can keep it! (That's what I did with the one below) And best of all, its cheap and you're recycling your trash.   

(5) Ok this one, I added as an afterthought! There comes a time when you're too lazy to grab another bit of card or maybe you're in the moment and don't want to pause to cut up boxes. I started just using my tarp for simple techniques. Like below, it works really well for pallet knives and those plastic wipers (sorry, I don't know what they're called!)  

Sorry about the rant, but hope it helped anyway! If you guys know any other types of pallets, let me know! 

Shivani  

Painting Miniatures - A Tutorial

I love painting miniatures! You can so easily engage with the canvas and the images so you can spend anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours on it! And, of course, they usually turn out amazing cause no one can see your mistakes!!

Here are a few that Ive done recently, so Ill take you through my process:

1. Lay down a base colour or if you're a bit lazy (like me), buy a canvas of that colour

2. Choose a few reference images. It makes color matching much simpler and you can think about your composition before hand. If you need it make some light pencil marks to lay down the image. 

3. You can skip this step if you want to use your own pallet but i do recommend fixing your canvas to another piece of card so you can move your canvas around without actually touching it (a smudge could easily ruin the whole painting). I fix my canvas to an A4 size piece of cardboard and then put small amounts of paint along the top. It just makes the whole process more accessible. I sometimes use a small bottle of water to clean my brushes as well.

4. I then apply the paint in small circles. This is just a technique I use though, feel free to apply as you want to! If I need to create a gradient over a large area, I actually use my finger to apply paint, it usually works better than a brush.

5. After I'm happy with it and its dry, I just spray on a thin layer of varnish to finish!

It's not much, but these techniques work for me every time! Let me know what you think!

Shivani

A Fluid Art Tutorial

I have recently begun experimenting with Fluid Art and unfortunately discovered that its not as easy as it looks! I'm far from an expert, but here's my simple tutorial. It will probably change in the future, but I'll keep you guys updated!

This is a final piece; I'm going to take you through the process.  

Final piece  

1. I first spray a thin coat of varnish on the canvas (make sure it's a stretched canvas) to allow the paint to move across it easily  

2. I then mix the colors I want with flow aid, water and pouring medium. First mix the flow aid and water 20:1. Add this mixture and pouring medium to the paint until you've got enough paint and the drips are continuous streams. Below is more than enough to cover 40x40 cm. 

The paint  

3. For this painting I attempted to be more controlled so I poured the paint in a pattern and attempted to spread it without disturbing it. There's no right way to do it, you can pour them all into another cup and pour this, or flip the cup onto it (a dirty cup pour). To spread the paint simply tilt the canvas in what ever direction your want it to fall.  

Applying the paint

Below is what it looked like after I finished pouring and spreading.  

4. I then added more detail by swirling the paint around. If you do it when it's wet the paint will Reform with the pattern you create but if you wait too long or move too much it will create a 'hole' in the surface. You can also use this method to correct any stray drips like the blue drop in the bottom left corner. Lift it out with a straight edge (some cardboard or a chisel tip rubber brush and move the surrounding paint to close over the gap. 

Adding detail

And here is the final piece!! I added more detail almost exclusively in the center.

Final piece

I've been watching a lot of tutorials and looking at a lot of fluid art pieces to come up with this technique but I'm still learning! So let me know if you have any suggestions! Comment below!  

Shivani  

Admitting to Defeat...

This post may have a gloomy title but, I promise it won't be that bad! I'm trying to record my failures here so I can learn from them. So here's the development of my latest piece that really didn't work (but let me know what I could have done better!): 

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Testing the Pallete

Putting the colors and textures together before you begin your piece is always a good idea. Thats what I did here. I even attempted to add streaks to the blocks of color but I quickly realised that did not fit with the rest of solid colors. 

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Practice Piece 

I then practiced the technique required. I used a palette knife that I cleaned before every stroke. This allowed me to realize that mixing colors would make the palette more interesting. But the lightest yellow would allow the background to show through.  

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The Unfinished Final

This is the final piece that I eventually gave up on. I genuinely loved the color pallet and therefore background but the original plan included the 'swirls' overlayed. However, as I started to build it up it began to darken the background colors and become more of an eyesore. Perhaps if I had enlarged the design it may have worked together better. All in all, not my best work but I am still genuinely proud. The color pallet is one I will use again and I tried to bring life to my idea! So I thought I would write this post to make sure your failures don't go in the trash or in the back of your closet. Learn from them!

Shivani

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Art is a Language is an online portfolio as well as store for Shivani Sarjan’s artwork; focusing on sharing development, processes and final works as well as how an amateur artist may accomplish these.