Angela Recada's Bleeding Heart Studio

March 11, 2012

Back to the beginning

Pansies
watercolor
8x10

Several years ago, when I was starting to paint seriously, I painted only flowers in watercolor for many months . I decided recently to try my hand at that again, and I loved it! I had forgotten how much I loved how watercolor moves where to wants to go, and pools and puddles in places, leaving interesting textures if you don't try to control it too much..

Purple coneflower and Monarch butterfly
watercolor and ink
8x10

I used photos I had taken the last few summers as reference.

Bleeding Heart
watercolor and Caran d'Ache
8x10

The Bleeding Heart is one of my favorite flowers, and it's the flower I named this online art studio after.

More flowers in watercolor to come. . .

February 23, 2012

From rags to stitches - my adventure with intuitive stitching

For years now, I've been using muslin remnants from the local fabric store to clean my brushes and wipe up leftover paint from the butcher tray I use as my palette. When I have enough of these rags to make up a nice load for the washing machine, I wash them in clear water, iron them and put them away for some future use.

At the beginning of the year, when I was looking for something I could do without having to drag out a lot of art supplies, I decided to pull out one of those painted pieces of muslin to see what I could do with it.

I drew on it just a bit, to create a few very rough shapes. Then I began to stitch. I stitched intuitively, without much thought for what image would appear. And I thought I was going to keep the stitching simple, but it didn't turn out that way. I ended up stitching the muslin to a piece of recycled denim and continued stitching on the denim.

Thousands of stitches later, I'm really happy with how this first muslin rag turned out. I don't know yet if I'll finish this in some way or add to it to make a larger piece. For now, just stitching quietly away without a plan was enough.

My mind is racing with the possibilities. . .

November 17, 2011

Two more leaf/tree landscapes

Wisconsin Landscape

acrylic encaustic mixed media collage with leaves

on 12 x 12 wrapped canvas

There was enough bright natural light today, so I was able to finish the last two landscapes I'll be doing for a while. I gave them an acrylic (faux) encaustic finish, so they would have a muted, organic look and better match the painting in the previous post.

(detail)

Wisconsin Landscape

acrylic encaustic mixed media collage with leaves and grasses

on 12 x 12 wrapped canvas

In this painting, I added some of that texture I love, as well as a few pieces of dried decorative grasses from our garden.

(detail)

Here's a photo I was able to take of the tree leaf/tree landscapes outside a few days ago. The painting on the left already has the acrylic (faux) encaustic finish at this point, but the other two did not yet have it. The faux encaustic definitely tones down the acrylic colors a bit, as you can probably see in the photos above.

October 20, 2011

Using leaves as trees

Wisconsin Landscape

acrylic encaustic mixed media collage with leaves

on 12 x 12 wrapped canvas

I thought it would be fun to experiment with some of the gorgeous fall leaved I had dried. So I decided to see how they would look as trees in this piece. The gold represents golden corn fields, and the purple line on the horizon represents the ever-changing colors of Lake Michigan. The piece has an acrylic encaustic finish, both to protect the leaves, and to give it a more organic look and feel.