Four Abstract Watercolor Canvas Paintings

As promised, I have some more photos of my abstract watercolor paintings on canvas!

First up, the tropical palm leaf......  I like this one so much I hung it in my master bedroom. I painted the leaves on the sides of the canvas to continue the design. That way I didn't have to frame it :)

This piece is full of my favorite colors: blues and greens.  I once read that the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than of any other color. Once you start mixing greens with your paints, you see how that is true.  There are so many possibilities in greens and they play so well off of one another.

And my salt and glue experiment turned out lovely.  I could drool over the textures all day! 

Now, onto the watercolor cactus paintings!  

These were the most fun to paint, because I love cactus and I love the process of painting watercolors on canvas.  At the time I painted these, I had no idea that they made canvas specifically for watercolor paints! I just gessoed my own canvas and went to town with runny, messy paints. One day I will try the watercolor canvases though. They sound amazing!

Abstract Watercolors on Canvas

I've been having all sorts of fun in my art room! Watercolor paints on canvas is the funnest thing I've tried this year..... by far! 

I had a hankering to create some therapeutic abstract art so I pulled out some old canvases I had in my art closet and layered some fresh gesso on top.  After the canvases were dry I worked up some heavy watercolors and painted them right on the canvas. So fun! I should have done this years ago!

The watercolors act so differently on a canvas than on paper.  They don't absorb nearly as well, but that makes them all the more fun and interesting! The run and mix and eventually soak in a little.  You have to be patient and you have to use more paint than you would on paper.

If the runny nature of a regular primed canvas really bugs you, you can apply a watercolor ground before hand. I've never tried watercolor ground, but it's on my list now!

I did a little experimentation with clear glue and salt along with the watercolors.  That was a fun one! I felt like a kid again and I loved it!

And then I had to try the spray painting technique too- the more ways you can find to get paint on your canvas, the better.

The last piece I tried was a larger palm leaf pattern, again with watercolors on canvas. More photos of that one to come! 

Do you like abstract painting?

I find it a welcome break from the routine.  I find it liberating! I could experiment with all kinds of art mediums all day long and never get tired of it. I'm always excited to see what will happen when I use materials in a different way or combine things I've never combined before.  I know I'm a bit of an art nerd, gushing about all of this here, but it's my passion and I hope I never lose that.