June paintings

Here are the two paintings I did for my mom back in June. They were my first attempts at doing photo transfers. They are also what got me back into acrylic, at least part-time.

Roots

First of all, this isn't exactly how this piece looks. I left both of the paintings from this post in Texas and forgot to photograph them. My mom tried her best to get a good shot of this piece, but the area she was working in wasn't cooperating, so there are shadows and light streaks... but I think you can get the general idea from it, so here it is.

For this piece, I painted on masonite board. I laid down some background washes, then did the photo transfer. I finished it by distressing it some and adding a few details, like the trees in the background and the roots at my grandparents' feet. It is approximately 5"x7".

I loved this image of my grandparents because I didn't get to see them like this very much as a kid. I'm pretty sure the original photo of them was taken before I was born. I remember them most clearly as either taking walks with us to parks or to the grocery store, or just hanging out/cooking/and cleaning around their place. As a youngster, I didn't photograph them much except outside of the chapel they went to for church, or at their place, in Warsaw, Poland. So I liked that this captured them happily together near the Wistula river.

Heritage

Here, I painted on canvas, 9"x9" I believe. Unlike the previous image, where the printout I used was straight black ink, this was a full-color black and white print. The differences are obvious. While some mid-tone values came out(which I liked), it didn't transfer as well (I'm not a fan of that). I didn't really mind that it went purple-ish. I'm into random "errors" in my art, and think that in this case it added to the piece. After doing the transfer, I went back in and added some more detail and some washes and then glazed the thing for good measure.

I wanted to capture a happy moment for my mom with this painting. The original photo was from her visit with Dale to Poland back in 2004. It was taken in their home, but I cut out all of the background that was initially a part of the image to simplify it. I like all of the different prints that they are wearing. In real life they were all kinds of different colors, so I like how the transfer process helped unify them in a way.