Pansy Flower Painting

Posted on October 28, 2015 by janellmithani

Pansies were my favorite flower when I was a little girl. They had such large petals and wonderful rich colors. My Aunt Helen, who worked at a greenhouse, introduced me to them. She brought a large pot full of their showy blooms to set on my grandparents porch. I thought they were so pretty and instantly fell in love with them.

Pansy, A Little Girl’s First Love, Acrylic on canvas, 20″ x 20″

Now I have many favorite flowers, but pansies will always remind me of being a little girl and the first flower I discovered. Painting this pansy was such a fun walk down memory lane. The paint just flowed onto my canvas.

I hope you have a wonderful, creative, day, Janell

Sketch of a Woman in Profile

Posted on March 5, 2014 by janellmithani

This weeks sketch from my sketchbook. Another one of my nature women. Wish I had those eye lashes. 🙂

Have a wonderful creative day, Janell

Sunflower Painting

Posted on November 21, 2013 by janellmithani

It has been a really busy month, but I was able to get out to the studio to work on a painting yesterday. I love sunflowers and I have photographed them a lot, so I thought it was time to start working on a sunflower painting. I used three of my photographs as a reference.

I am just about finished, I just have a few more details. As with all my paintings, I have this “sitting” period when I have it “sit” on my easel for a couple of days. This is so I can walk by it a bunch of times and get a fresh look to determine the final details and any changes I want to make. I love the heavy texture and of course, the green background. You know, this Irish girl loves her green! 🙂

Here is a close up of the corner where you can see I continued the painting around the edges as I used a gallery wrapped canvas. I like this style of canvas best because the back of the canvas is double wrapped with wood for a nice clean look.

I will post the final painting soon.

Have a wonderful creative day, Janell

Mixing and Building Texture with Acrylics and Molding Paste on Canvas

Posted on March 23, 2013 by janellmithani

This painting was a really fun experimental piece. I thought I would share my creative process since it was a little different from my acrylic painting on canvas.

I had picked up some Golden acrylic mediums a while back and I have used the Coarse Molding Paste for a couple of image transfers, but I have been wanting to experiment with adding it to an acrylic painting to build up some textures and shapes. For the first layer, I mixed my acrylic paints with some Golden Acrylic fiber paste and coarse molding paste which created a thick textured paint that I applied to the canvas and then let dry. Then I painted the background over it. I painted the flowers adding in some medium in some areas to thicken the paint and add even more texture.

Tools and supplies… and my very messy art desk.

These are the supplies and tools I used as well as acrylic paints and brushes. I went tool shopping in my kitchen drawer and found some useful items. I finally got to use that Pampered Chef scraper! They are now designated studio tools. They were just using up space in my kitchen anyhow. 🙂

About 1/2 way through the painting I decided to add some more texture by applying the Golden Coarse Molding Paste to a stencil. I applied the molding paste without any paint to the stencil. I used my palette knife and a plastic knife to apply the paste to the canvas.

Applying medium (generously) over stencil.

The plastic knife created an interesting lined texture.

Once I had a lot of medium over the stencil I used my Pampered Chef squeegee (not sure what it is actually called) from my kitchen to get a smooth surface.

Smoothing out the medium.

Then I lifted the stencil off. I cleaned the stencil with the squeegee and put the excess paint back into the jar. (Don’t waste any of it!) I finished cleaning the stencil with a wet paper towel and then hung it on my window with painters tape to dry so I can re-use the stencil for other projects.

I also used a portion of a stencil to write the word forever. The triple picture below shows the stencil, the dried paste and then a detail of the finished painting with paint over the top.

I also applied some of the Acrylic Coarse Medium over the paint in some areas as well as mixed it with the paint to add more texture to the flowers as I painted in more details.

Golden molding paste over painted canvas.

More texture added to the flowers with Golden Coarse Molding Paste added to my acrylics

More texture added to the flowers with Golden Coarse Molding Paste added to the acrylic paint.

Another stencil application in the lower left corner of the canvas. Once I lifted off the stencil, I went in and added more lines with my palette knife while the paste was still wet.