Every so often I get the urge to do something very familiar – in a completely new way. I paint a lot of street scenes and people with umbrellas but I love to mix up the way that I do it either through products or process.
I’ve used a medium called slow dry in the past. It’s fun in the way that it makes acrylics act a little bit more like oil paints. The dry time without the slow dry medium/additive can be a quick as a couple of minutes. With this medium, I get as much as a half hour based on how thick the paint is initially applied and how much I move it after that application. (Because I paint very thick, oils can take months and months to completely dry).
In these recent paintings I have applied large amount of paint to a thin undercoat on the canvas. Then essentially ‘scraped out’ the forms or figures. These are fast, active and exciting pieces. Once the paint is mixed I know how much time I am allowed and work quickly to get as much as possible done within the first sitting. Where much of my work would consist of multiple sittings, these pieces have two; the initial application – including the scraping out of the scene and then a touch up.