acrylics | Mama Cormier

….encouraging my husband to pick up a paint brush

When I met my husband he was an artist. He studied art at college and his first full time job was as a graphic designer. When computers started to take over his chosen profession he changed careers and he abandoned art in order to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. We both worked until I took five years off to raise the kids. When they were in school full time I went back to teaching and my husband became a financial planner.

Over the years I started to pick up paint brushes and drawing pencils and took many classes and on-line art classes to learn everything I could about art techniques and practices. I love it. I tried to encourage my husband to start his art journey again. He wanted to but he was hesitant to start.

Well he finally started last week and I can’t stop him. The only reason he didn’t make another painting today was because he ran out of canvases. In total he has already completed 15 paintings. He’s experimenting with colour and techniques of laying down paint. I can’t tell you how much this has lifted his spirit. We’ve just finished renovating our garage so that he can use it as a summer studio to make larger works of art.

Here are a few of his completed pieces.

…thanks to Carla’s recent on-line mini class in finger painting

Using only your hands to paint is very liberating. I loved the simplicity of it and the feel of the paint on my fingers. I’m hoping to do more and I haven’t even tackled the third assignment that let’s you get really messy.

The first assignment was to create a palette of colours using your fingers to mix the paint and apply them to the paper. The second part was to paint a vase of flowers but I decided to use two of my photographs that I recently posted and try to recreate them with this finger painting technique. Jill Kuhn actually gave me the idea after she commented on the first photo, suggesting that I paint it with watercolours. Instead, I used acrylics and my fingers. What do you think?