Hi! I’m Laura Thomas, a Vermont-based artist with severe chronic illnesses (I’m homebound with ME/CFS, MCAS, and Long Covid, so I paint in bed or on the floor next to my bed!). My style is: “Art that makes people happy.” I particularly love to create mountain ridges using fluid techniques. Anyone with patience can learn how to do this! So, here’s a step-by-step guide explaining how I created this painting, “Lavender Mountains:”
TOOLS:
- A small-nozzled squirt bottle for water
- A dropper or squirt bottle for your primary fluid paint mixture
- A doggie pee pad to put under your canvas (you’ll paint on the floor)
- A treated canvas
- Natural Earth Paints (either heavy-bodied or fluid Acryliks)
1. Mix up the primary color that you want to use. For my mixture I used one part paint (Ultramarine Purple, Titanium White and Black Ochre heavy-bodied Natural Earth Acryliks, with one drop of Ultramarine Blue Liquid Acrylik), one part Natural Earth Acrylik Medium, and two or three parts water. You can blend the colors/water together in a small dish and then transfer it to a dropper or squirt bottle. Every time you use this mixture, you’ll need to re-shake it so that the paint doesn’t stay settled on the bottom of the bottle.
2. Lay your canvas out flat on the floor, on top of a pee pad. You’ll notice that as I move through this process, the pee pad gets splotchy. I am not one of those artists who keep a tidy work space - there’s paint all over my bedroom.
3. Use a small-nozzled squirt bottle to spread a small amount of water across the canvas in a pattern that mimics the farthest ridge of a mountain range - this will be the lightest range in color value.
4. Use your quirt bottle to squeeze a few drops of water into the water that you’ve spread across the canvas, and then spread those drops throughout the water using your hand (you can wear a glove if you want to protect your fingers; I like to “feel” the paint consistency) or a brush. The shape of the water will contain the paint within its boundaries.
5. Very, very carefully, you can tilt the canvas to get the paint to spread evenly through this layer. If you tilt too much, the water will overflow and you’ll have to start fresh with a new canvas. This happened to me once already today (I always use these “botched” canvases for full-coverage paintings at a later time).
6. Once your layer is evenly covered with the few drops of paint, let it dry for at least 8 hours, preferably 10-12. Yes! 10-12 hours! Plenty of time to Netflix and Chill or start another painting. This drying time is super important - each layer needs to dry completely before you start the next one. If you don’t let the layer dry, the next layer will just bleed into the previous one and you won’t get the defined ridges. Also important: Keep a close eye on the painting as it dries! If it’s not completely flat, the water may “overflow” its original boundaries and this will tank the whole process. I actually flubbed a “Lavender Mountains” canvas before succeeding with this one, and I’ll use that flubbed canvas to paint a full-coverage acrylic painting!
7. While the canvas dries, prop it up with small tools to make sure it stays flat. And I like to tilt the canvas ever so slightly, so that more of the paint “pools” at the top of the ridge. This gives it a defined edge.
8. When the first layer is dry, repeat this process to create a second ridge, using the same amount of water, but two or three times as many drops of your paint mixture - this will make the layer darker than the first.
9. Along the way, I like to create my bottom layer so that I know where my painting’s boundaries will be. Sometimes I keep creating layers all the way to the bottom of the canvas, but for this painting I want a defined top and bottom.
10. Then make another layer with two or three times as many drops of paint as the previous, then another, and another. I find that I need at least five ridges to make a painting look complete.
11. When I got to my fifth ridge, I wanted the color to be even darker, so I added a tiny bit of black and a dollop of purple paint to my mixture. The bottom layers may need less time to dry since there’s a higher concentration of paint, which will dry faster than water.
12. Once my purple layers were complete, I decided to add one thin layer of Natural Earth Gold Liquid Acrylik, which will show up as a golden mist.
13. The gold paint looked very white at first due to the medium’s tone, but the whiteness faded as it dried. And this is the final piece!
