My Painting Process

I have been making things for my Etsy shop, MadeByCiara, for a little while now.  At the moment I am focused on making paper goods, such as cards and gift tags, but I hope to, in the future, expand into other products, like home décor and soft furnishings.

My cards are one of a kind artworks that I have painted with acrylics and various tools and techniques. I have been making art like this for several years now and enjoy the process of working without a plan. I use only primary colours and mix them together on the paper as I work.

I thought it might be interesting to share with you my process.

The tools I use are mostly what I have at hand. In this session I had out my palette knives, sponges, and paintbrushes (although I didn’t end up using the latter). Often I use a bit of folded paper or cardboard or sometimes even my hand. My aim is to create texture and pattern in the image so I like tools that can mix the paint together, but also can allow the paint to be kept separate.

My first step is to squirt the paint directly onto paper. I typically use thick paper or card. In this example I am using cartridge paper taken from an old sketchbook.

Next I move paint around with palette knife using a scraping motion so the colours stay separate and they thin out. I keep scraping to mix the colours together a little more.

My next step is to smear the paint with sponge. I like the effect the sponge gives when you spread the paint thinly. This also helps to mix the paint a lot more so I don’t necessarily do it across the whole image.

In this example, because of the colours used, I decided the colour was too dark so I added more red directly onto the page.

Again I moved the paint around with a palette knife to create texture.

Once dry I cut the white edges off and then cut down the picture to size. In this case, I managed to create seven gift tags and two images from cards as shown below.