"Switching Point" a 11" X 14" watercolor

 

"Switching Point" © April M Rimpo

Switching Point

Watercolor on textured watercolor paper

11" X 14" Painting

$600 

includes a $50 framing budget, currently unframed.

The views along train tracks show a variety of subjects including cityscapes, rivers, mountains, and expansive fields. This painting looks at the workings of the railroad: the train light signals that keep trains on schedule avoiding collisions and the switches that move trains between tracks. The workers you see along the rails keep everything maintained. These are essential workers that keep this part of our infrastructure in order.

Switching Point is a watercolor on watercolor paper that was textured with a gesso and acrylic medium mixture. Working on a textured surface adds a lot of interest to the background. I textured this by using stamps to apply the gesso and acrylic mixture. The pattern was over most of the surface, shining through to different degrees depending on whether I subdued the pattern as I was painting.

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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.

Dancers II " 9" X 12" mixed media

Dancers II, 9" X 12" X 1.5", $250

Dancers II

Mixed Media

9" X 12" on a 1.5" deep Wood Cradle

$325

Available for Purchase Here

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.

"Dancers" 6" X 6" Mixed Media

Dancers by April M Rimpo

Dancers

Mixed Media

6" X 6" X 1.5" wood cradle

$100 shipped within U.S.

Available to Purchase Now

In Dancers I decided to create a mixed media painting starting from a sheet of watercolor I had prepared during the January 30 paintings in 30 days challenge. I hadn't included any of my fused glass in a painting in a long time but I was feeling a need for a change of pace, so I fired up my small kiln and created a few items that I thought I could used on some small mixed media paintings. 

The fused glass included here is of a woman dancing with a child. When I started the painting I wasn't sure where I was headed for a background, thinking some non-objected abstract should work well. However, toward the beginning of the painting I noticed I had unintentionally created the shape of the tall woman on the left and decided immediately that she too should be dancing with a little girl. I added some strokes to give the feel of motion and swirling skirts. 

The next day I decided I needed to emphasize the torsos and immediately thought to add some sheet music collage elements, similar to what I did in my "Rhythm" series. So the collage elements were added along with some darker strokes to continue to emphasize the flow and shape of the woman and child.

I always like to add some linear elements to a painting that has a lot of curves to break up the flow and introduce places to stop your eye from wandering aimlessly. Adding some dots I felt would beckon back to the sheet music.  Now that the painting is done it seems to me the woman might be playing an instrument with a bow. I'll let you decide.  

Enjoy this playful painting.

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.

City 10" X 10" mixed media

City by April M Rimpo

These paintings are titled "Country" and "City". My inspiration for the "City" painting came during a Touchstone Gallery reception.  I stepped outside during the reception and took some photographs of DC at night. Since I was planning a tree scene for "Country" I thought my image of one of the trees in front of the gallery lit by a street light would be a nice companion.  There were bicycles parked by the tree and those, of course, had to be included. In fact they were the reason I had taken the photograph.  This led to my decision to add a bicycle to the "Country" painting.  

City

Mixed Media

10" X 10"

$250

Available for purchase here

Country by April M Rimpo - SOLD

Both of these paintings were started on canvas and on rice paper. The rice paper was used to create textures in the foliage. It was attached to the canvas and then I add more paint to the rice paper surface allowing the underpainting on the canvas shine through.  







HoCoArt #ShopSmall #SmallBizSat

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 2015 All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution, but all other uses are prohibited.

Mixed Media Trees

Recently I taught a couple sessions of my workshop, "Fun with Fluid Acrylics." The focus was primarily acrylics that, as the name implies, come in liquid form. These paints can be used much like watercolor.  This workshop explored not only the watercolor-like properties but also how to incorporate mixed media techniques into your paintings. One of the mixed media techniques included the use of Masa rice paper.

The tree paintings shown here started with a loose dripping wash and later included rice paper for the trees and some of the foregrounds.

Family Trees by April M Rimpo

Family Trees

Mixed Media

8" X 10" in wood frame

$200

Available here for purchase

Southwest by April M Rimpo

Southwest

Mixed Media

12" X 12" mounted on 0.75in deep cradle

$375

Available at Touchstone Gallery in December

Southwest Cliffs by April M Rimpo

Southwest Cliffs

Mixed Media

14" X 11" mounted to a 0.75" deep primed board

$400

Available here for purchase

This technique can also be used to create an exciting finish across the entire painting, which you can see in Standing Tall II. 

Standing Tall II by April M Rimpo

Standing Tall II

Mixed Media

14" X 11" mounted to 1.5" deep wood cradled board

$425

Included in the 2018
Celebration of the Arts
Art Silent Auction

If you want to learn more and see how a master uses this approach you might want to check out the book,

The Watercolor World of Cheng-Khee Chee.

More Mixed Media paintings using rice paper:

• City and Country

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.

"King of the Roost" SOLD

King of the Roost by April M Rimpo

King of the Roost is another rooster painting inspired by last year's trip to the Montgomery County Fair. There were quite a wide variety of roosters, but this one stood quite proud, showing off for the crowd. The real rooster was a Black Breasted Red Old English Rooster, but aficionados of this breed might have a hard time recognizing him. I definitely took liberties as only an artist can do with the colors and also the shape of the rooster's tail, which does not have such pointed feathers in its tail. I used some watercolor pencil to add strokes of color, although I'm not sure if they are visible in the finished work since layers of paint were added on top of the pencil lines.

Using chicken wire like patterns to give the illusion of feathers was a fun playful departure from reality. Adding geometric shapes to the background inserted some contrasting shapes to this very proud bird. Enjoy!

 King of the Roost SOLD at Still Life Gallery in Ellicott City.  

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 signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo Art

In Search of New Textures

What you likely know about my work is that I often like to include as much visual texture as I think fits with the piece.

Join the Crowd by April M Rimpo

Sometimes I drip or spray water on an area that has started to dry to force some small lighter areas, as I did on the background and in the feathers on Join the Crowd.

Join the Crowd

Watercolor

10" X 14" image

Framed in Brushed Silver Frame

$425

Available at HorseSpirit Arts Gallery

Poinsettia Tree WIP by April M Rimpo

Other times I apply paint and when it is mostly dry I spray it with water to remove the areas that are slightly wet leaving hard, yet organic, edges. You can see this in the leaves in the closeup of Poinsettia Tree, taken fairly early during the creation of this painting.  To see the completed painting click here.

The Apex by April M Rimpo

Drips are another favorite method of mine to create textures, as demonstrated in The Apex.  There is always a purpose when I use a texture since I feel the texture has to enhance the painting, not just be decorative.

Since I always an looking for new, interesting, and maybe faster ways to create textures I decided to take a mixed media class from Nancy Barch. First of all let me say that Nancy is a wonderful teacher, full of great ideas. The variety she uses in her work is fascinating. I knew from others who had taken her workshops how much she had inspired them to try new approaches in their art and I am so glad I took her workshop. 

Since I love the transparency of watercolor and fluid acrylic I was looking for techniques I could adopt and transform, as necessary, to enhance my work without being a major shift in style. 

Below are images of some of the work I produced in this workshop. You can see we used much thicker applications of paint on the first three pieces, but the variety of textures are magnificent.  My challenge over the next few months is to test methods to adopt Nancy's concepts and use them in a slightly more fluid manner to see if I can add more depth and nuance to my paintings.  I'm always striving to add visual interest and believe the new vocabulary of textures from Nancy's workshop will do the trick.

 

Abstract Flowers;  White on White;  7th & Carroll;  Lunar Blue; Destruction