Play with your art materials

Today I felt compelled to write about the benefits of playing with your art materials, especially if it's in a medium you don't usually work in.  You can learn about mediums and perhaps become more interested in working in a new medium by experimenting with it.  If you're not setting out to create a cohesive piece or art and just want to experiment with materials then you're less inhibited and more free to just have fun and that is why I feel it's a good idea to play with materials every so often.  When you have a mental block is one of the optimal times to take part in this type of exercise.

Let me tell you why I decided to write about this today.  Last night my younger daughter who is 10 years old and I were working on painting some ocean waves onto a piece of cardboard with acrylic paints for my wife's Halloween costume that will be "Rub-a-dub Three Men in a Tub" and I learned a lot by just playing around.  The two of us were just slopping on paints in various blues, greens and purples and we were trying to work fast so that we were working wet in wet for blending purposes. 

The two of us had so much fun just painting and talking.  More families should do this type of activity instead of turning on the TV or playing video games.  You can learn alot about your children and bond with them by doing something as simple as moving paint around and creating silly pictures.  It doesn't have to be a set picture or even have to be a great work of art when you're done.  Create an abstract painting, make shapes or swirls of color, paint colorful clouds, layer acrylics and see how layering can create new colors and have fun.

Back to my point that is you can learn how materials handle and their possibilities by just experimenting with simple designs.  You can try new materials to see what they can do.  You can use your normal medium and try new things without the pressure of creating a masterpiece.  If you don't normally layer your oils then give it a try.  Try oils over acrylic to see what you can achieve.  Try pen and ink over acrylic or heavily thin your oils and try using them like watercolors but above all you should have fun and learn!

Almost everyone is thinking about or going green these days so why not do your part.  I recycle old boxes all the time and using them to do sketches on and experiment with.  Some of the paintings on my web site are painted on old boxes.  I cut out sides of boxes from cereal, crackers, snacks, etc and then put one or two coats of acrylic gesso on them and let them dry.  I usually cut out the boxes and stack them flat until I have a bunch and then I paint on the gesso with a large brush and let them dry and then do a second coat if desired.  You can also recycle your old tin cans as well and use them as potential canvases and perhaps make some money at it as well.  Check out my previous post on "Crushed Can Art" pioneer Charles Kaufman who is a very successful and wonderful artist.

There are some paintings on my web site (see above) that were painting on boxes.  In the photo of the plaster cast in this blog posting you can see the shadows from the corrugated box.   Of course these are not meant to be lasting paintings because boxes are not meant to last a lifetime and sometimes if I really get into a painting and it comes out good then you do have regrets of not painting them on canvas or masonite to begin with.  But I guess you have to hold yourself back from letting that happen.