Waxing and Waning

Title: Waxing and Waning

Form: Triptych

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Background: Since most of my work is digital these days it’s been a couple years since I put actual paint to actual canvas. As I was decorating my new apartment I wanted to hang something new, but couldn’t find much I really liked. Finally I just said !@#$ it, and decided to paint something myself.

Influence: I am absolutely horrible at watercolor painting. That doesn’t mean I can’t fake it though, and mimic some of the natural blends that comes with the medium using acrylics instead. My apartment is lined with several works by Lora Zombie a Russian born blue haired muse whose works tend to drip and bleed all over the place like a colorful hemorrhaging heart.

Methods: I blocked out all the forms in Photoshop and drafted how the colors would transition.

Once I was generally happy with each design I projected the Photoshop image onto each canvas, and lightly traced each form in pencil. This saved me some time/effort rather than recreating the shapes again freehand. It also let me make maximum use of the canvas because I could control how each form would scale and appear depending upon how I moved and resized the projection.

After that I gave the forms a more definitive outline by sketching them with acrylic pens. With the sketches in place I then apply paint mostly working with the darker colors first. Before the paint can dry completely I hit it with a spray bottle and basically just let it drip and splatter all over the place. Even if you overdo it I can go back and fill in more color. Once I’m happy with the color I use a hair drier to accelerate the drying process before adding another layer/color.
The acrylic pen sketches underneath are set, and don’t bleed so the subject never loses it’s shape and I didn’t use them in the hair for the most part because I wanted to keep it as unwieldy as possible.

This is definitely one of the most organic methods of painting I’ve done before because I have no idea how things are going to play out with the unpredictability this much water brings. Regardless I felt I had more control over the direction of the paint with acrylic than I would have with watercolors.

I finished it with several coats of high gloss varnish to make the colors retain their pop.

Subject: I wanted to paint vague feminine forms across 3 panels, and not reinvent the wheel. So this particular piece of neopaganism lends itself pretty damn well to the segmented triptych form. So each goddess gets their own panel.

References:
Contemporary Paganism: The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone
Greek: Artemis, Selene, Hecate
Thomas De Quincey: Mater Lachrymarum (Our Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (Our Lady of Sighs), Mater Tenebrarum (Our Lady of Darkness)