Painting Acrylic Abstract Art Away from Home

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I've been dog/house sitting in Spain for about 5-6 weeks, so now that I'm back I thought I'd let you know about my experiments painting acrylic abstract art away from home...

Acrylic painting trumped watercolours

I took a little kit of watercolour paints and materials with me, as they were ok to pack in my cabin baggage, but I must admit I really missed using acrylic paints. While I do love to see a good watercolour painting, I was really out of practice myself, and found that I couldn't use a lot of the techniques I've grown to love while using acrylic paint.

There were no art shops in the small town I was staying in, but I did find one of those 'we sell anything you can think of' kind of places and happily they had a cheap set of acrylic paints I snapped up!

I'm a messy kind of painter, so I bought a dust sheet at the same shop and set up what you can see looked more like a serial killer's lair than a studio, so I didn't get paint anywhere I shouldn't 😆

Empty yogurt cartons and a pizza base became my water containers and palette - I love a bit of repurposing 😁

And because the paints I bought were cheap and I wasn't expecting to paint any masterpieces, I could experiment to my heart's content...

Abstract acrylic experiments

Watercolour paper really soaks up the paint and normally needs to be primed with gesso first. I didn't have any with me so just had to add a LOT of layers before the colours kept their vibrancy.

This was great though, as I knew that whatever I did would soon disappear (like an analogue version of Instagram Stories 😂) and so it didn't matter what any of it looked like! I posted a reel with some of these layers on Instagram if you'd like to take a look... All of those photos are from just 7 different paintings, and that was only about halfway through my stay, so I really did paint a lot of layers!

As well as slapping a lot of paint on in various different ways, I also experimented with some more unusual techniques. Here are a few examples where I used real leaves and flowers/petals from the garden and my walks around Alcossebre to print directly onto the paintings. I got the idea for this in a newsletter from Judy Woods, an artist in Australia, and immediately went out foraging 😃

Without my usual equipment, I also found some interesting tools to daub and create texture with, including a spongy keyboard cleaner to create fun dots with and the corrugated cardboard from a packet of crackers to apply an interesting lined effect. The latter was something the artist Kasia Clarke had mentioned in a course of hers I did, and the cracker cardboard was just calling out to be smothered in paint...

What I learned while away

I missed being with my favourite people and having all my usual art supplies with me, so probably wouldn't go away for such a long time on my own again, but I'm still glad I did it. Here's what I learned...

I don't need fancy tools and equipment to make art

I was still able to enjoy painting using whatever I had to hand, and it did make me more creative in coming up with ideas and ways to make new marks.

These three paintings used variations of the techniques and 'tools' I've already mentioned, and although I'm not 100% happy with them, I'll definitely be taking some of these techniques into future works.

But paint quality does matter...

The coverage of the cheaper paints wasn't as good as what I usually use and I've no idea how they would hold up over time, so I left them behind in Alcossebre. I'm looking forward to getting stuck in with my usual paints again!

Painting just for fun is important too

It was great taking the pressure off and not caring whether I produced something I was proud of or not. I loved painting purely for the enjoyment of it all. I knew I could just paint over anything I created so nothing mattered and it was very freeing.

The funny thing is that by not caring I tried doing stuff that was completely different to what I usually do, and discovered things I wouldn't have otherwise. And I think this will make me a better artist in the long run. But even if it doesn't, it was worth it purely as as a bit of escapism or 'therapy'...