"They're Everywhere" 30" X 24" Fluid Acrylic by April M. Rimpo

They're Everywhere by April M Rimpo

They're Everywhere

Fluid Acrylic

30" X 24" image

Available through my website 

Two of my favorite things combine in They're Everywhere: the colors of pigeons and painting with drips and splatters to create the illusion of a rocky cliff.

I know, so many people think pigeons are pests but I love their iridescent colors. I'm also amazed that no matter where I travel I see pigeons. I've done paintings of pigeons in Italy, Seattle, New Jersey, and now Colorado. 

They're Everywhere was particularly fun because of the way I created the background of this painting. I started by spraying water on the paper letting the water run in all directions, making rivers of water the went across and down the page, weaving a random pattern on the page. I then dropped on color, either with a brush or by using a pipette, and tipped the paper to make the colors blend randomly following the path of the water. I also added some splatters here and there that became the shadowed spots on the cliffs.  After drying I continued painting to refine the cliffs, but many of the random cracks in the rocks and shadows were already established from the first wet-into-wet wash.

I've included a video of me creating this painting; a time lapse over a week of painting. Enjoy!  I'd love to hear your feedback.

Post Updated Sept 8, 2020

Interested in April's artwork or taking one of her classes? Consider becoming a Studio Friend by signing up for her twice-monthly email. April segments her newsletter so you can select topics you'd like to hear about when you sign up. For those who Select the General Interest topic you will receive emails about twice-monthly. If you are only interested in classes, then the emails will be much less frequent discussing upcoming classes and how to register. Thank you for your support of April M Rimpo Art. Oh, and please be sure to click on the link in a second email to verify your interest in joining my newsletter. Without the verification you will be left in a limbo state where you will not receive my emails and I can't complete the verification on your behalf. If you receive a response that you are already subscribed, email me to confirm and I can send you a different link to update your profile and get the verification email resent to you.

Contact April and see more of her art on her website

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Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Serenity Found" 20" X 60" watercolor

Serenity Found
Watercolor

20" X 60" painting
23" X 63" frame

Available at HorseSpirit Arts Gallery
Contact Info:m301.490.2001 info@horsespiritartsgallery.com

In Serenity Found my goal was to create a painting that could provide a great place to relax at the end of the day.  Taking inspiration from a photograph I took mid-morning and shifting it to sunset allowed me to contrast the distant mountains with the near desert plain using complementary colors and cool versus warm colors.  I decided to make it an early sunset so the horses wouldn't be entirely backlit, allowing me to show some of their details. 

I hope you enjoy viewing this painting and that it has a healing effect on you, removing any stresses from your day.

Interested in April's artwork or taking one of her classes? Consider becoming a Studio Friend by signing up for her twice-monthly email. April segments her newsletter so you can select topics you'd like to hear about when you sign up. For those who Select the General Interest topic you will receive emails about twice-monthly. If you are only interested in classes, then the emails will be much less frequent discussing upcoming classes and how to register. Select as many topics as sound of interest. Thank you for your support of April M Rimpo Art.

Contact April and see more of her art on her website

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

Quite a Run in AcrylicWorks - Best of Acrylic

It never gets old being selected for the Northlight Publications' Best of Acrylic Painting series AcrylicWorks.  Each year when the new Edition arrives I am thrilled to share it with friends and to add it to my bookshelf at home. 

AcrylicWorks3: Creative Textures featured work that used either tactile textural approaches or the illusion of texture in the work.  I had  two paintings included: Moving Up and Struggles in the Southwest.  I've included the images of the two pages for these paintings. 

Since the text for Movement was on the left page, I've included the full page spread.

In each book the artist provides a short writeup about the paintings on inspiration and technique.

At right is the second painting in AcrylicWorks3: Celebrating Textures. I found my southwest paintings were the best subject to show how I create the illusion of texture. Crevices of rocks that provide handholds for the rock climber and the texture of the rocks in the mounds of each grave were perfect subjects. 











AcrylicWorks4: Captivating Color included one of my paintings, Freight Yard, which continues to be a favorite of mine. This was likely the first time I decided to do the sky in a color other than blue. I spent a lot of time considering the color scheme of the painting to really emphasize the cranes and freight cars. A blue sky would have diminished the impact of this painting. I retained the texture of clouds but the pale yellow and brown with tiny hints of blue really makes this painting sing.

Freight Yard, 24" X 45" fluid acrylic by April M Rimpo

AcrylicWorks5: Bold Values is the 2018 Edition of Best of Acrylic Paintings and I am delighted to have two works in this book: Lanterns and Movement.  Lanterns is in the Cityscape/Urban Scene section, while Movement is in Figures/Portraits section. 

Lanterns 24" X 18" Fluid Acrylic by April M Rimpo

Lanterns is available at HorseSpirit Arts Gallery in Ellicott City, Maryland. The colors pop even more in person than they do in the image here. I repeated the colors of the lanterns on the shadowed sides of the building, using purple and other dark colors to build up the middle value and darkers areas. I love how the lanterns reflect in the glass, so I included those reflections in my rendering.

This painting was included in Courtney Jordon's article 25 Acrylic Paintings from 25 Top Artists.

Movement 25" X 18" Acrylic by April M Rimpo

Movement is one of my tributes to the Triathlon that runs through our town each year. I love to photograph the cyclists and then portray them and their energy as they travel through our rural setting. When working on an abstract background, using bold values are essential to emphasize the rider. I so admire these athletes that I love to painting them.

Click here to Contact April

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Grosvenor Arch" 12"X12" fluid acrylic and watercolor

Grosvenor Arch by April M Rimpo

Grosvenor Arch

Watercolor and Fluid Acrylic

12 X 12 X 0.75" deep, wood cradle

$400

Available here for purchase

There are numerous places in the United States southwest where you can see beautiful, red-rock arches, pinnacles, spires, and cliffs. I always find them inspiring and Grosvenor Arch in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah was no disappointment. This painting started as 22" X 14", depicting the full height of the arch, but after some time I decided it is the arch itself that fascinates me, so I decided to rework it in a square 12" X 12" format.  The the focused look brings back memories of a great trip. 

Click here to Contact April

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Rock Arch", 8" X 8" fluid acrylic by April M Rimpo

Rock Arch by April M Rimpo

Having lived in Arizona for many years I love the red rocks of the southwest United States.  There is something about the natural arches that are especially appealing to me.  Perhaps I am drawn to these because they are formed by wind or water, depending on their location, and the thought that nature has such power to change our surrounds.

Many of these are located in southern Utah, northern Arizona, and south western Colorado. Often being hot dry environment they are generally in sparsely populated regions, so not only do you have these amazing rock formations, but there are wonder dark skies for view the sky. I took liberties and made twilight a bit brighter so I could include and illusion of starry skies in this painting.  There is even a hint of the glow of aurora borealis, which in reality don't generally occur this far from the north and south poles, but artists are meant to take liberties.

Rock Arch

Fluid Acrylic on Varnished, Gallery Wrapped* Paper

8" X 8" X 1.5" deep

$160 when shipped within the United States**

* No framing required with gallery wrapped paintings

** Contact April if outside the United States to discuss shipping costs

"Struggles in the Sourthwest", 24" X 34" gallery wrapped fluid acrylic on paper

Struggles in the Southwest by April M. Rimpo

You may remember my June blog post called Pouring Paint, about a workshop I had taken from Linda Baker.  During that workshop I painted Harder Times which was a close up of one grave in Mission Tumacácori.  I designed Struggles in the Southwest earlier but decided it was too much to tackle in a workshop and went with the simpler version. I visited Mission Tumacácori sometime in the 1980s as part of my explorations of Arizona. After moving to Arizona in 1980, my husband and I continued to explore many National sites with Indian ruins during our 17 years in the state.  One of my interests, in fact my initial major in college, was archaeology, so visiting these sites allowed me to catch a glimpse of the past.  To learn more about this Mission visit the National Park Service site.

Like Harder Times this painting was poured, but with fluid acrylic instead of watercolor. Below are a few images showing steps in creating this painting.

Value Sketch

I generally start each painting with a drawing of the outlines of the shapes in the painting, but this one was complex enough that I decided to do a value sketch. The purpose of a value sketch is to work out the darks, mid-value, and lights in the painting. I admit I went beyond a value sketch and toward a much more complete drawing. However this was done on tracing paper to allow me to more easily transfer the drawing to watercolor paper.

The image at right shows the result of the first pouring of acrylic paint.  The acrylic was poured after I transferred the drawing, then masked areas I wanted to keep white. The first pouring uses the lightest colors in the painting, filling the role of the lightest mid-tone.  To accomplish this with acrylic, the pigments are very diluted with water.



When the first layer dries, more masking fluid is added to some areas where I want the lightest mid-tone.  A second pouring is done that has nearly the same amount of water mixed with the paint. Since it is on top of the first layer of color, it looks darker.  I added more blues to the second pour allowing them to mix with the Quinacridone Coral pigment to create lovely lavender shades in areas where there are shadows.

In this third process photograph I have added a few darker areas and, when the paint dried, I removed the masking.  

Notice the golden tan stripe along the left edge.  After I gallery wrap the painting over a stretcher frame, the stripe will be on the edge of the painting. Sometimes I run the image around the edge and sometimes I use color stripes.

    

This last photo was taken after several touch-up sessions. A variety of dark colors is added in the darkest shadows under the rocks and more color to the crosses. A great deal of work was done on the rocks to blend some of the dark edges and to emphasize the twigs and grasses in the sand around the stones.

There was a small amount of additional touch-up to finish the painting after this image was taken.  The finished painting in the top image shows just the front of the painting after gallery wrapping. 

Pouring Paint

Back to the Barn, watercolor by April M Rimpo

Harder Times 19” X 15” watercolor by April M Rimpo

In the past I've done a couple paintings where I poured the watercolor paint to minimize the amount of time a brush actually touches the paper.  This approach to watercolor is unpredictable and definitely for those who are willing to let the painting tell them what to do next, but can result in the most amazing glowing paintings.  I love to watch the paint flow and respond as needed, so this technique is great for me.

This week I took a workshop from Linda Baker, who uses pouring in all her work.  I decided it was time to take a class from an expert since my previous forays into this technique had been based on reading books and trying it on my own.  I've included images in this post of one older poured painting and the one I created this week.

Although both exhibit beautiful blends of color, the new painting Harder Times glows more than Back to the Barn.  Partially this is due to the pigment choices.  Linda Baker is an amazing teacher and filled my head with so much great information I'm sure my work will take another step up as a result of this workshop.   Since this approach is so compatible with my painting style I'm sure I'll use it in much of my work.  I even plan to give it a whirl when I use fluid acrylics.  I'll let you know how that turns out.