Thursday, September 17, 2009

Teach Me


This is another one of my background practice pieces. I'm still not thrilled with how dark it is but I really like the how the flowers turned out. The petals are cut from vintage sheet music then stained with yellow paint. They are outlined with black charcoal pencil and smudged.

I learned a lesson a long time ago about brushes. You get what you pay for and you really cannot get good results from cheap brushes. I think I am ready to see if the same thing applies to paints. I have used acrylic "craft" paints for years, mainly in case I left a project for a period of time. It can be pretty frustrating to mix your own colors and get exactly the same shade a second time. They are difficult to mix because the pigments vary so much. The amount of pigment in one shade of yellow is different than another shade of yellow and the amount of pigment in a bottle of blue is not necessarily equal to the amount of pigment in a bottle of red. Crap shoot. I think I am ready to try the 'real stuff', Liquitex fluid acrylics. They are easily 4-5 times the price of craft paints but I want to find out if they will give me the color control I am looking for.

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