Mixed Media Angel of Bliss Acrylic Painting

 Angel of Bliss

In this new painting I concentrated on lightening my palette.  I was tired of the darker and heavier colors that I had been using.  Limiting my palette to three basic colors, plus black, white, raw umber and light portrait pink really helped me to simplify my approach to this painting.  The three basic colors I used were quinicridone magenta, pthalo blue [green shade] and pthalo green [blue shade].   All the colors you see in the painting were mixed from these colors.  This insures that all the colors will relate to one another...None of that funny feeling you get when your colors are fighting and clashing.

I was pretty generous with my white paint, which kept the colors light and summery [like sorbet, as my daughter observed].  I had not used a retarding medium much in the past.   [I always wanted my work to dry at lightening speed.]  This time however, I used the retarder in order to make the blending of the background and skirt easier.  I'm now a devout convert to retarding medium.  I also added a bit of Flow medium to make my high velocity paints more fluid.  Matte medium is pretty much a constant in my mixtures to make sure the first layers, [usually pretty papers, stamps and vintage ephemera] can peek through. 

Please note:  white mixed with a color can make the mix too opaque.  Add matte medium to make it more transparent and test it out to make sure you won't be covering something you'll want to see.

Because I used a charcoal outline, it needs to be fixed before I apply the acrylic varnish, or it will smudge.  I'm not liking the fact that spray varnish is highly toxic.  Some artists I know use hairspray to fix delicate media just enough so that an acrylic varnish can then be applied over the whole canvas. I tried it and it works great!  Make sure to allow all applications to dry between coats.