Not using a brush or a palette knife…

The June challenge in the Abstract and Contemporary Art forum at WetCanvas is (was) to “…create a painting without using a brush or palette knife.” I had decided way back at the beginning of June to try this…I have no idea where the month has disappeared to…but here it is the last day of June!!!

I thought that this challenge was something that I would be fully open to and well equipped for...I have no qualms about using my fingers or any instrument that will get the paint on the canvas the way I want to slather, smoosh, or dab it on…except I always like to do a base coat or 2 of a colour first...I’m not too anal about a lot of things…but I do have a thing about starting a painting on a nicely coloured, smooth canvas…even if I am going to go and put all kinds of texture on it! So it was more of a challenge than I first thought...having to start my painting without the usual smooth base…it is very easy to just reach for a brush without thinking about it!

I applied the first base coat with a credit card-type piece of plastic…hard to get smooth…but I am going to accept uneven into my life - for this painting anyway…














Once the first coat was dry, I put on a second, darker blue base coat, again with the credit card-type thing…it came out looking a lot like denim and I quite liked it and so decided to leave a fair amount of the background showing in the overall piece…


















After the base coats were dry, I applied the modeling gel…again using the credit card-type things, and then using the laptop hard drive metal holder for the honey comb-like texture, the old metal number 3, my plastic triangle painting support and a pen cap for the other textures…then I had to wait for a few days for that to dry!













Here is where I am at now…maybe finished…not sure yet…I used q-tips and my fingers to apply the paints and inks over the modeling gel. I dribbled inks on some bits of cheese cloth that I had set on some waxed paper and let them dry, and then I splattered more inks on them using an old tooth brush. After I stuck the hardened cheese cloth pieces onto the canvas with the modeling gel, I dabbed on some acrylic paints using q-tips.


















This has been a fun challenge and it is funny, but in a way it has made me less fussy about using some of my brushes...I have these beautiful, pristine brushes that I usually use for everything, but I also have these old, abused ones that I never used…now I find myself using these old beat up ones more…on other pieces I am working on…for smushing the paint into the textured parts…for this piece I couldn’t use the brushes, but for these other pieces…boy is it so easy to use my old ones…