Acrylic Painted Backgrounds

Welcome to Sketchbook Share Saturday!  I’m sharing a peek into my art experiment notebook, and I hope you will share yours as well.  This week, I’m still experimenting with acrylic paint and layering colors, but I couldn’t resist adding some digital layers in the mix too.

If you’re just tuning in, you can find all the “what“s and “why“s at The Great Art Supply Experiment Introduction.  I’m trying some new things, picking up my art supplies, and having fun, learning along the way.  No rules, anything goes!

Acrylic paint stamped background with digital overlay|Carla Schauer Designs

I am loving the process of painting and getting my hands messy again.  I’ll admit to wishing I knew more about how to get what I’m envisioning down on paper, but letting the perfectionist in me relax a bit is a part of the creative process I need to work on anyway.

I worked quite a bit this week on layering and mixing color and texture.  The photo below has an acrylic painted background created using a large brush and a mix of aqua and green.  The shapes were stamped using a mix of found objects (bakers’ twine circle, plastic fork, and bamboo skewer) along with some hand carved images.  I added a digital texture overlay and text in Photoshop to come up with the image above.

Stamping with acrylic paints|Carla Schauer Designs

The background below was a quick brushed layering of oranges and yellows that I made to compare different types of paint.  The colors reminded me of sunshine on my dreary Ohio winter day, and I couldn’t resist making it into something more.

Orange Acrylic Paint Background|Carla Schauer Designs

I scanned the background and added overlays of some of my digital art to make a happy little flower image to brighten the day.

Acrylic paint and digital layering|Carla Schauer Designs

What I learned this week:

•  Keep going.  While some of the painted backgrounds I’ve created this week are pretty unimpressive on their own, they make good bases for hybrid or mixed media compositions. I may just go back to some of the pages I wrote off and see what they can become!
  

Thanks for stopping by!  If you have done some art experimenting this week and blogged about it or posted somewhere, let me know in the comments.  I’d love to see what you made!

Until next time…

Carla