Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Fractured duck

Duck Bucket 2

                                               Duck Bucket

                                                            5 x 7   oil

No, no don’t report me for duck abuse!  Its only the paint I fractured, not the duck!

I had downloaded a Artbyte tutorial on Daily Paintworks by Julie Ford Oliver on using fracturing in painting (thank you Julie!) and because I get side tracked easily from my main painting tasks, I thought I’d try it out using this image of one of my ducks from a few years back.   Also check out Celeste Bergin’s experiments with fracturing paint too  here and here.  Love that red chair!

I didn’t have the scraper tool that Julie adapted, so substituted a Catalyst rubber blade made by Princeton which was flexible and about an inch broad, but likely need to adapt a scraper to fit the bill.

I think my piece is more palette knife than paint fracturing, but it was fun to do and I may try again with a more refined technique instead of slapping on paint quite so lavishly.

The duck story?  I had quite a few ducks a number of years ago, and the white Pekins were one of my favourite.  Chatty, busy birds that made a line around the farm and laid lots of eggs as well as cleaning up grubs from the grass. They always  seems to be looking for something in the grass and if an inanimate object was found, they would “wash” it in their water bowl and there it would stay.

Pekin ducks LOVE water.  And yes, you say, ducks do.  But not all ducks do.  My Muscovy ducks didn’t like water much and BD, who I still have, really, really dislikes water except on days so hot he needs to cool down.  However, Pekin ducks make a beeline for any water.  A red bucket of water had been put out for them and a few minutes later I could hear scrabbling and quacking and went to investigate.   This duck got too excited and climbed into the bucket then, of course, couldn’t get out and had to be rescued.  Its a bit like having toddlers around.  You need eyes in the back of your head!

Never a dull moment around here!

6 comments:

juliefordoliver.blogspot.com said...

I loved seeing this. Your colors are wonderful and I think you did a great first attempt. Pretty amazing I would say. Your advantage is you are an excellent artist and most likely could paint with a toothbrush and it would look good!
Maybe there was an area you found you liked the results and will try it on another painting.?
The tool you used is really good for the fracturing. Any shaper is. I made mine for a few reasons but the basic use is exactly the same.

Jeanette Jobson said...

Thanks for the kind comments Julie. With this I believe I let the palette knife take over more than my concentration on fracturing process.

Yes, there are areas such as background that have sections of promise that I can take forward into a new piece and will do so.

Celeste Bergin said...

good work "fracturing" your duck (lol) Jeanette. I am glad you tried this--it is very cool looking! I think the best thing about trying Julie's method is just trying something so different. You did very well!

Jeanette Jobson said...

Thanks Celeste, but I don't think I quite got the fracturing part unlike you who did that fab pear and bowl. I'll try again however and see what happens.

I never could follow directions... :)

Clipping Path said...

Nice to see this duck art .

Robert smith said...

I like this Fractured duck illustration. It was really so beautiful. Thanks