Ocean Glow

Ocean Glow is a large, rectangular abstract painting that features a series of graded colours shifting from light to dark. The main focal colour is green (and it’s aqua/turquoise derivatives) accented by metallic gold, black and white.

This painting’s master stroke is the metallic finish; something that’s built into all the green and aqua pigments I used.

Playing with pigments

I don’t often use base pigments on their own. These form the colour structure of the paints and or normally mixed in with them at source. However, occasionally I’ll find a range of coloured pigments online and buy them. On this occasion I got fixated on about half a dozen green metallics that I simply couldn’t ignore.

Now, unlike every other artist using them, I chose to mix them with something other than clear resin. In fact, for only the second time in 15 years I have isolated the base resin from my enamel paints and used that instead. This choice allows me to mix with my existing paints without reactions or emulsification and also provides me with a consistent finish.

This is important as I am also using my regular enamels for the rest of the painting, so achieving a uniform coat was paramount in my head. If I were to use an epoxy, or water-based, hard set resin I would be in all kinds of problems as these don’t mix well when they meet enamel paint and all their odd properties.

Worth the effort?

Absolutely! A quick look at the four close-up photos will reveal an incredible depth and sheen to the metallic elements. It’s hard to show that in a static photograph as you really need to move around the canvas to see how light interacts with all the tiny particles. It really is magnificent and if that doesn’t make you think of warm oceans somewhere in the South Pacific then I don’t know what will!

As yet we haven’t mentioned the gold elements. There are two in here and both are, again, metallics. One is a deep, yellow gold and has a wonderful texture to it and because it has a slightly larger flake it glistens in a different way to all the others. The ‘regular’ gold (if you can ever refer to it as that) is a staple at Swarez HQ and is featured in a lot of my work. In this original painting it’s a brilliant addition to all the others.