April 2025: Paint over anything
On thing that I love about acrylics is their infinite layerability and opacity, which is a fancy way of saying that you can paint over anything! In fact, if you don't need to keep or sell your work, you could keep painting on one canvas for years.
Last month I grabbed this pre-gessoed canvas panel for my live demo about soak stain painting. I was showing how the gesso creates a solid, minimally absorbent surface that we paint on top of, rather than staining by bleeding the paint into, which is what happens with watercolor on paper, or thinned acrylics on raw canvas in the soak stain method.
Not all acrylic paint is opaque. The acrylic polymer binder dries clear, and some colors have such finely ground pigment particles that the previous layer shows through when you paint. But, if you mix in a bit of white or do multiple layers, most paints can become sufficiently opaque to paint over even vivid and dark backgrounds.
I used to use a solid layer of paint or gesso to cover up surfaces that I wanted to paint over to give myself an even starting surface. It was too confusing to paint something new over a chaotic background. It doesn't bother me as much now though, and I like the possibility of random bits of a varied underlayer showing through. These days I tend to just start right in.
I made this painting after looking at some David Hockney paintings and watching some of his interviews online. He uses clean lines in some of his work and I wanted to emulate that vibe a bit. It made me think of this photo I'd taken of our dog Miko earlier in the day. The door to my studio doesn't quite reach the floor. When she was a baby, she could shimmy right under. Now, she just sticks her nose through and waits for me to open it.
I wanted the focal point to be Miko's face, so I didn't want to get too deep into rendering the wood. I also didn't want to create too much contrast between the two, or paint in too many interesting details, as I wanted them to serve the role of that the background usually does, even though in this case they're up front.
