p.v.a

I finally found the time and headspace to do some painting yesterday.

I had a lot of fun with acrylic paint on top of p.v.a glue which i then warmed up with the heat gun (as learnt from a YouTube video about homemade crackle medium). Crackling wasn't as crackly as i hoped it would be but i enjoyed making the glue under the paint bubble. This left a useful textural ground for future layers.
    Then i had a good slap, smear and scrape with oil paint and my palette knives. If i put acrylic on top of the partially dried oil paint layer today, i may get some better crackling. The basic rule of crackling is having a wet layer with a secondary layer which will dry quicker. It is the movement of the under layer drying beneath a skin of the already dry upper layer, which causes the cracking. An oil layer beneath a water based layer is probably the best method. I have done this by accident, i realized, when i read about it. But the pva was a worthwhile exercise as it's so versatile and surprising a medium.

I used a small decorating roller on the oil paint to nice effect and indulged in some Tonking. (Worth Googling!)

It was just SO nice to enjoy picture making again.

      In Other News, i have been very busy over the last fortnight making a dedicated photo-blog on WordPress. I have managed to do it but it felt like splitting the atom at times - unlike Blogger, you have to go through a baptism of amateur web design to achieve the objective. However, i still haven't worked out how to make it visible. So, it's really nice but it only exists on my own computer!

   Here's this month's bee of the week (as featured on rOtOgraphia at WordPress......).