Category Archives: Blog

Art update

It’s been quite some time since I have posted, but I thought it was time for an art update!

I have been doing a bit more work with resin on my pieces and I am getting closer to a flawless finish. I had three pieces that I wanted to work with this week, which are all on wood. Two of the pieces previously had a coat of art resin on them. I had decided to give each another coat because I wasn’t happy with the finish due to imperfections, and thought I could add something extra to the piece itself by painting on the first coat. I gave the top of the resin layer a good sanding, so the next layer would have something to adhere to. Then I painted on top of the resin to add something to the painting.

The other piece I wanted to resin was a painting I created very recently of my partner from this digital drawing that I made:

I really liked how this digital drawing came out, and wanted to capture it on wood panel with resin. Once I painted it on wood, I gave both the front of the piece and the sides two really good coats of acrylic medium, to make sure that the wood was well sealed and that it would not soak up the resin.

I kicked my poor kitty out of the basement, took ample time to set everything up, and poured my resin.

This time I waited in the basement (while listening to podcasts) for about 15 minutes, and kept checking the pieces for bubbles. As more bubbles appeared, I popped them with my torch. I must say that taking this extra time to keep an eye on bubbles hugely decreased the amount of imperfections when cured.

The results:
 

Connor, 12″ x 16″, acrylic and resin on wood, 2018.

The glassy finish is reflecting some of the room around it, but in person the surface of this piece came out perfectly. I am super impressed with the finish of this piece as it is the biggest piece that I have coated with resin so far. There were no bubbles or indentations and it looks fantastic, really bringing out the colours of the piece and adding to the flat look of the digitally painted style I was going for.

Before:

This isn’t a great photo, but I had put a coat of resin on this piece some time ago and was not happy with how it turned out. As you can see in the upper left corner, there are bubbles in the resin. Also, in one spot the piece seemed to soak up the resin and left a huge indent. I really wanted to refinish this one to fix the resin, but I also added some additional painting because I thought I could make it more interesting and give it a bit of a 3D/layered look as well.

After:

Fake 2, 10″x12″, acrylic and resin on wood, 2018.

I’m really impressed with the depth that the new layer of paint gave it, and the second coat of resin fixed the imperfections. I also think the new colours made the painting more interesting, and I am much happier with it now!

Before:

For this piece, I had been experimenting with adding green ink to the resin to see how it would turn out. Unfortunately, the ink migrated alot. Generally, while it was an okay abstract piece, I didn’t find it particularly interesting and I wanted to do something more with it.

Idea:

I sanded the resin, and painted a bicycle on it to give it a focal point and something interesting to look at.

After:

Bicycle, 6″x6″, acrylic, ink and resin on wood, 2018.

Voila! I am super happy with how this turned out. The resin gave the bicycle layer almost an inky quality. The addition really makes the piece more interesting, it allows the abstract portion to work while giving the piece a focal point. Essentially, I saved a piece that I considered a failure.

That is what I was up to this week with my art! I have also been doing some digital drawing, and I will be sharing that in the future.