As 2024 draws to a close, I realize I've only written one blog post this year! Does posting every day on facebook count, I wonder? I try my best to share one painting per day (via facebook and instagram) and I encourage other artists to do the same--why not flood social media with some positive images for a change?
This summer, I learned some new ways to use acrylic paints after viewing a few instagram reels and trying (and failing) to replicate what I'd seen. For me, the most intriguing painting technique I embraced was "bubble art" which involves mixing equal parts Dawn dish soap, fluid acrylic paint, and water into a wide shallow container (small yogurt cup works well) and then stirring to mix it. You then take a plastic straw and place it into the container and BLOW BUBBLES! With your watercolor paper at the ready, you scoop the resulting bubble froth onto the paper and let it sit (for hours) while it dries. As the bubbles slowly pop, they print circular bubble patterns onto the paper. You can use any colors you like--I tend to favor a sort of navy blue mixture with some sepia in it. You can even mix up separate cups of color and alternate the colors on one sheet of paper, but again--I really liked the neutral effect of the darker colors. (I also had some success with white bubbles on black paper).
Of course, it's never as easy as it sounds--some of my early results were either too light or too dark, and gently scooping the bubbles onto the paper was difficult (a dedicated spatula did the trick!). But patience also helps---I had to wait for the papers to fully dry and then I found that if I used a hot blow dryer on them (only after they are dry---otherwise bubbles fly around the room!) it sort of "fixed" the paint in place.
But wait--there's more! It turns out that when you try to later apply paints to the bubble print paper, the bubbles "resist" the paint, which is rather frustrating. Through a little trial and error, I found the solution to this problem: gently rinse the paper under a thin trickle of water (after you've blasted the paper with the blow dryer) and most of the soap will slough off. It sometimes lightens the bubble pattern a bit, but not much. NOW, you are free to paint on the paper using acrylics (I favor Golden fluid acrylics). In some cases, you may have to apply several coats of white gesso to cover up parts of the bubble pattern that you don't want in the painting.
Here are a few of the bubble starts I created this year:
This summer, I learned some new ways to use acrylic paints after viewing a few instagram reels and trying (and failing) to replicate what I'd seen. For me, the most intriguing painting technique I embraced was "bubble art" which involves mixing equal parts Dawn dish soap, fluid acrylic paint, and water into a wide shallow container (small yogurt cup works well) and then stirring to mix it. You then take a plastic straw and place it into the container and BLOW BUBBLES! With your watercolor paper at the ready, you scoop the resulting bubble froth onto the paper and let it sit (for hours) while it dries. As the bubbles slowly pop, they print circular bubble patterns onto the paper. You can use any colors you like--I tend to favor a sort of navy blue mixture with some sepia in it. You can even mix up separate cups of color and alternate the colors on one sheet of paper, but again--I really liked the neutral effect of the darker colors. (I also had some success with white bubbles on black paper).
Of course, it's never as easy as it sounds--some of my early results were either too light or too dark, and gently scooping the bubbles onto the paper was difficult (a dedicated spatula did the trick!). But patience also helps---I had to wait for the papers to fully dry and then I found that if I used a hot blow dryer on them (only after they are dry---otherwise bubbles fly around the room!) it sort of "fixed" the paint in place.
But wait--there's more! It turns out that when you try to later apply paints to the bubble print paper, the bubbles "resist" the paint, which is rather frustrating. Through a little trial and error, I found the solution to this problem: gently rinse the paper under a thin trickle of water (after you've blasted the paper with the blow dryer) and most of the soap will slough off. It sometimes lightens the bubble pattern a bit, but not much. NOW, you are free to paint on the paper using acrylics (I favor Golden fluid acrylics). In some cases, you may have to apply several coats of white gesso to cover up parts of the bubble pattern that you don't want in the painting.
Here are a few of the bubble starts I created this year:
And here are some of the finished paintings that I created using the bubble technique (you can see the before and after in the pear painting).
Of the hundreds (yes hundreds) of paintings I completed this year, 20 or so were done using the bubble technique. All told, I must have created 50 sheets of bubbled papers (because practice makes perfect and not all bubble patterns are worthy of developing into paintings). I have much more to discover about how to develop these starts into finishes, but I'm enjoying the process thus far.
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