Did you ever stop to think ...

... and forget to start again?
(A A Milne - Winnie the Pooh)

The final project on my art course was to create an abstract and we had to find our own inspiration.

Which for me involved a lot of thinking!

Abstracts are quite difficult as they come from the imagination, but there has to be a starting point. For my inspiration I found a photo of a autumn day with the sun coming through autumnal foliage; I just loved the colours. Then - more thinking ...

I decided to experiment by creating some poured acrylic skins. Which means doing a normal pour, but onto a non-stick surface. I used a silicon oven liner.

I let them dry and cure for about 2 weeks before I peeled them off, and stored them between sheets of wax paper.

I'm using a 12 x 12 stretched canvas, and I drew a design (for placement) before using dilute acrylic paint for the background.

I'm quite impatient whilst waiting for paint to dry, so I have learned that putting more acrylic over wet acrylic takes the first layer off. I used this to my advantage by creating fast moving drips over over the wet first layer. I made both horizontal and vertical drips.

Next I painted the circle in gold and added the horizontal and vertical lines. Later I knocked back the lines as they were too strong.

I carefully cut the skins (with scissors). I do like geometric shapes, hence triangles! Finally, I added some mica pieces (Golden's Gold Mica Flakes) which are held in a transparent medium.

I've called this "Summer's Last Breath", and it will probably go into my Etsy shop.

Hope we have seen the last of the bitter cold wind and freezing temperatures, and that summer is not far away!