As a child and beginner painter, I started out in watercolor, but found my style when I tried acrylic on canvas for the first time. I’ve tried painting in oil and pastels (and have never been good at drawing) but I always come back to acrylic because I love the way it looks and feels on the canvas.
However, it’s always great to try a new medium. While visiting my family in Canada this month, I tried creating an image in wax, my mother’s medium of choice, and it was a great experience. She started me in her chosen method of melting crayon chunks on a canvas with a heat gun, and let me figure it out from there. I took photos of the process:
It was great to try a less controlled approach, since I usually struggle against overworking and adding too much detail when I’m painting. I did miss my brush, but I was able to influence the spread of color by tipping the canvas back and forth as I melted the wax.
I would call this one an abstract, but the general idea was to capture the old growth cedar forests near where I grew up on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. We just got back from a trip to Vancouver Island, and I’m looking forward to doing some new paintings of these trees in Tofino:
