Mixed Media Distressed Painting Commission Step 4

In order to help unify the panels, I must work still another layer of distressed paint of various colors here and there. I will also add another smaller image to the telescoped distressed image in the center of each panel, and perhaps a line or 3 across them. At any rate, I am one week away from being finished. I will post an image of the finished product hopefully before the ind of the month.

Butterfly World Photo

I save thousands of digital photos in my “morgue” for possible future use in artwork.* These photographs can be of anything from zebras to alfalfa. This photo was taken in Butterfly World several years ago. If you visit Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I would recommend a visit to this, one of the worlds largest butterfly conservatories. You will be provided with a fabulous photographic opportunity, and a wonderful aesthetic experience.

* morgue – an artist’s alphabetical file of photographs to be used as aids to drawing, painting, or illustration. If the works are the artist’s own photographs, they may be used individually as artworks, and or incorporated into mixed media artworks in their entirety.

Mixed Media Distressed Painting Commission in Process Continued

Step 3


Because each step in this process changes the paintings drastically I've purposefully arranged the panels in a different sequence from my last blog entry. Can you match panels across step 2 and step 3?

Step 3 looks very different from Step 2, and is made up of 7 critical stages without which the entire process would fail. First, new images were laminated over the varnished layers beneath, 2) next the entire surface was covered with oil crayon, 3) a new color of tempera paint was applied, and 4) after drying the surface was distressed so that parts of all the layers beneath would show through, 5) several coats of pastel fixative were sprayed on the surface at 5 minute intervals, 6) The entire surface was coated with a satin UV protective polymer varnish and finally, 7) new digital photographs were taken of the panels at this stage of production.

In the next and final step, I will use Adobe Photoshop to place opaque and transparent digital images of the painted and distressed panels as they were at the end of step 3 onto a final layer of photographs. These will be carefully torn and laminated onto the surface so that the image of the painted surface will match perfectly with the actual painting creating the impression that painted surface and torn paper photographic images are one and the same, an ironic and redundant toying with reality.