Acrylic paintings and occasional digital art. Some step by step demos and various comments on the painting process. Also now discussing fused glass.
It’s been awhile since I have posted and I am sorry about that. I’ve been traveling and having way too much fun. I’ve also had some commission work taking up a lot of my time also. Because of my busy schedule i’ve been working on my ipad pro a lot more doing digital art. Here are a few pieces and a link to my Society6 storefront. https://society6.com/lyndapikearts or click on Society6 in the Links list at the right.
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| Butterfly Migration......digital 6500x7000 |
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| Iris & Cabbage Butterfly |
In the digital paintings below I demonstrate the value of using an underpainting color. This can be done digitally or in real paint painting. With real paint you have to choose your underpainting wisely, as it is not as easily changed as it is with digital painting. With digital painting you have the ability to put the underpainting on a seperate layer that you can change and delete easily without disturbing your painting. Using a warm color under a coolpainting can give your painting a little complementary punch and adds a little excitement to your strokes. Cooler colors under a cool painting can give it a more calming effect. This technique works best with oils and acrylics, real and digital. Give it a try.
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| Cool painting with magenta underpainting. |
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| Cool painting with purple underpainting. |
Yes’ I am still on the road. The only art I have been able to do is digital. Thank goodness for my ipad pro. I just finished working on this digital painting of the Ennis, Montana area. The top one is the original, but with the magic of digital manipulation I can change the season and the mood of the painting. What one do you like best?
Need one of a kind original art greeting cards? Check mine out at Fineartamerica.com by putting Lynda Pike greeting cards in the search tab.
Check out some of my art prints in frames. You have lots and lots of frame choices and mat colors to choose from when you purchase my prints at fineartamerica.com. There are also canvas prints available framed and unframed and many other wonderful products that can be printed with my art on them. Check out the widget at the right, click on an image within the widget and it will take you to my page on their website for ordering.
Click on an image in the sldeshow below. It will take you to the fineartamerica.com site where you can purchase my art printed on various products as well as canvas prints, framed prints and greeting cards.
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| step 7 slumped |
The bowl is completed and fullyslumped and I am pretty happy with the outcome.
While my last project is in the kiln slumping I have now started a palette knife painting of some of my spring roses. I have never taken a class in this method but I have done a couple of these on my own a few months back but using Aloe Vera Gel. Now I’m using VitriGel which I like much better and its not that much more expensive then Aloe. Below are some photos of the beginning steps of this project. I will add more photos as I move along in the process.
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| My photo photoshopped with background stuff removed and vase shape changed. |
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| Quick tracing of roses. |
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| Bullseye glass of clear and vanilla overlaying tracing. |
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| Palette Knife painting in process. |
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| Close-Up. |
Check back for updates on this project.
Finally got back to this project after the holiday weekend. I finished up the roses and added some leaves. I found a piece of black glass in my stash and decided to use that for my base color. I’m not totally committed to the black yet. I have a long wait until I can get some more clear frit for the top layer. Everyone is out of stock. So I’m still deciding whether or not to just fuse this piece without the clear on top or not. So again keep checking back for the finished piece.
My newest project using the Vitrigel product by Michael Dupille.
Here is a step by step photo version of the project.
The first step cutting the circle of glass and creating my design. I just hand sketched the design with a fine sharpie marker. Later on in the process I added more detail to the design.
The next step was painting the design with the gel & glass powder.
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| Step 1 |
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| Step 2 |
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| Step 3 |
Step three photo 3 is what it looked like after fully dried.
Step four below is the piece fully covered with clear frit and ready for the kiln.
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| Step 4 |
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| Step 5 |
Step 5 is after first full fuse. As you can see the sunshine yellow kind of disappeared into the green base glass. So on to a second fuse.
Second fuse after I added more yellow and more details in photo below.
The piece is in the kiln slumping in a wavy bowl mold. I will update this blog entry as soon as it comes out of the kiln .
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| Step 6 |
Pendants are a great way to use up left over supplies from larger projects. Sometimes trash becomes treasure. Leftover gel and powder paints that dry in cups overnight can be popped out of the cup and crushed up to make speckles and flakes of color to be used in other small projects such as jewelry. Also bits of frit and enamel paints can be used. These pendants were all made from stuff left on my table. Be sure to stop and think before you toss what looks like a mess into the trash can.
This is another Powder painted fused glass piece. I did this on a 7” black circle. I used Dritz sewing white carbon like tracing paper to copy my design onto the black glass. That worked great. It was a suggestion someone made on one of the Facebook glass groups. Sorry I dont remember their name to give credit. Anyway next I mixed up my Vitrigel and different colors of glass powders. I used squirt bottles to paint my design and a couple of clay tools to move it around with. I layered clear frit on the piece and full fused. No problem with bubbles on this one as it is only one layer of base glass plus all the frit. One fuse and probably one more for slumping, probably into a wavy bowl.
These cabachons were made from scraps. I dont like wasteing glass so I used the powder and gel paint that dried in the mixing cups after it dried hard. I cracked it away from the sides of the cups. I used a scrap transparent piece yellow gold glass for the base and used left over squirt paint for the edges and then filled in with the glass flakes from the cups and covered with clear frit and full fused with the flower piece above.
Check back soon to see the fantasy flower bowl slumped.
Its now slumped into a nice bowl, arty and functional. Its great for a salsa bowl, dip bowl, candy bowl etc. I am very happy with my slumping schedule. It fully slumped to the bottom with a nice flat bottom.
This was quite a challenging piece. I started with a 6x9 clear base and a transparent dark blue top piece. On the clear base piece I used Vitrogel and glass powder mixture to create a background mottled texture. I just used a palette knife to move the mixture around until I like it. Then I began painting my flower with the Vitrogel and powders on the blue panel. I dried these pieces thoroughly. I decided to add leaves on the backside of the blue panel so they would be in the middle layer giving the piece some depth. I used my colorline white paint to do the leaves. That way it created a shadow effect by making those leaves opaque blue. I then fired these two pieces seperatly but together in the same kiln.
After the two pieces were fired I put them together and did a contour fuse. I wasnt quite happy with the piece yet so I added more leaves to backside and added green leaves to front side creating more depth. I contour fused this again but the green leaf kind of curled up on the edges and made a sharp edge. Not good. I ground the sharp part off did a little more painting with powders and full fused a last time. I am pretty happy with the piece now except one miner booboo. When I fired the first two seperate pieces the edges shrank in slightly and made a slightly thicker edge. So when I put the two pieces together there was an air pocket left between the two pieces. I was not observant enough at the time to notice that. When the two pieces were fused together bubbles were created. The only unusual thing about that was the bubbles are only in the background area around the flower not behind the flower anywhere???? Also no bubbles around the 1/2 inch border. At least it looks almost like the bubbles were intentional in the area where they occurred. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Next time I will top the back layer with clear frit to even it up level all the way across to eliminate that air gap.
The next new product I have tried is Glass Bird Modeling Glass. It is a 2 part powder and liquid that you mix with your glass powders. It is easy to mix up but you need to follow the recipe carefully. It turns into a glass clay somewhat like playdough. You can roll it out and cut it, you can make coils, you can make flower petals, you can cast in molds. After its dried you can carve and sand it. Its an awesome product if you want a sculptural or textural quality to your glass pieces.
The photos below are just a quick project to try out the product. I cut the recipe in half and only made 1/4 cup. I kneeded the glass clay and then rolled it out and free hand cut some petals and leaves and made a coil for the stem. I dried all the pieces first in my oven on a silicon matt at 200 degrees. When dry I placed the pieces on a transparent scrap of rose glass. I contour fused at 1400 in my fiber kiln. Not realizing that the pieces shrink 15% and move around, they seperated. So it is probably best to fuse your pieces before putting them on the base glass. DAH! Well not to give up on this piece I just added more to it and redried and refused it. No problem!
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| First contour fuse. |
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| Second fuse with a different green color blend. |
This is about an 8” butterfly I hand cut out of opaque yellow glass by hand...not by saw. When trying to cut such a complicated shape it broke into 4 distinct pieces that fit cleanly back together. I cut a dam out of 1/8 inch fiber board with an exacto knife to hold the pieces together so they would not seperate in the fusing process. It was a gamble but worth the try. First I tacked the pieces together with the vitrigel. Then I preceeded to paint the butterfly with the vitrigel and glass powders. I thoroughly dried the piece in the oven at 225 degrees for about 25 minutes. Then covered the whole thing with clear frit and fired at a full fuse schedule. All the pieces fused back together nicely. Now I would like to attach some wire antennas.
The next butterfly piece I did was on a rectangular piece of opaque yellow glass. I used my same butterfly pattern that I had drawn for the cutout one above but added the subtle leaf backgound. Again I used the Vitrigel and powders to do the artwork. Below are some photos of the piece in progress.
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| Finished piece 6x9” |
An experiment gone wrong??? Maybe not. I tried using a cookie cutter I thought was stainless steel for a dam but as you can see it was not. It was tin coated. Fortunetly I lined the inside edge with kiln paper so the glass actually turnd out OK all the tin coating burned off cleanly so maybe if I kiln wash it and lined it I could use it again. Would the steel give off dangerous fumes? I don’t know. Guess I better check into that. Here is the photo of the heart. It is about 5” and made from scrap glass.
Its been awhile since I’ve posted. I know you should post every day but that’s just not how my life is. Honestly I don’t think you all have time to read posts daily either. So here goes my fused glass update. In my last post I talked about a class I took in Las Vegas at the Glass and Bead Expo. Today I am talking about the second class I took there.
Below are some photos from the class. The class was called Fritography with a Twist with Michael Dupille as the instructor.
I can’t give away his secrets but I can say that we used his product called VitriGel with glass powders using two different techniques of creating art on fused glass. I love using the product. I’ve been using aloe vera gel for powder painting techniques but this gel is much much better. I am so interested in creating fine art with fused glass and this class was right up my alley. Below are my first pieces I did in the class. I don’t do my best work in a class situation but it was fun and my pieces aren’t too bad. Check them out below.
You can go to Michael Dupille’s website to purchased his products and videos I just purchased his beginning Fritography Video and can’t wait to receive it.
I had a great time at the Las Vegas Glass and Bead Convention recently. I took a class on making coral bowls. It was only a 3 hour class so we only got to construct an 8” bowl. It was a little hard to get the amount of holes I wanted in this size bowl. I wasn’t to happy with the instruction I received. The number of glass pieces should have been a lot less and more spread out for my liking. At least I know what not to do on my next one. The piece was full fused there and it was all white glass. We took the piece home to sift powders on and full fuse again and slump ourselves. I thought that class was a little pricey for what you learned.
I took another class which was more fun and right up my alley. I will post about it tomorrow.
Here is a series of photos showing my 16x16 acrylic painting, step by step, on Canson Acrylic Paper. This was the last painting I did this winter in the Phoenix area. This is on the grounds of the San Exavier Mission. It is an extraordinary mission with a lot of history.
I’m still loving painting on this Canson paper. My next challenge will be mounting the paintings I’ve done on this paper to hardboard for framing. I will let you know how that works out.
This painting is an abstract painting that just happened. It was not preplanned except that I first painted it on my ipad, something that I often do. I kind of liked something about it and decided to paint it again on paper. I made some small changes to it to improve the compostion and just had fun with it.
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| 16x20 Acrylic on Paper.....”Life Lines”. |
