Frosted | Posted: Nov. 11, 2016, 1:50 a.m.

Media: Acrylic paints and pumice gel on canvas board

Time: ~6-7 hours

As I have mentioned before, my high school art teacher encouraged us to explore different artistic techniques. One of the many techniques we explored involved working on building up the canvas without a subject matter in mind. Once we felt we were done building up the canvas and background, we would think of a subject matter that naturally fit into the piece.

I approached this technique by first deciding on a color palette I liked. I choose a palette comprised of white, silver, maroon, and blue. After initially painting the canvas blue, I noticed my art teacher had laid out other materials (various pumice gels) to help add texture to our canvas. I initially used the coarse pumice and mixed it with the blue acrylic paint to build up the background more.

The background reminded me of a cave, so I attempted drawing stalactites and stalagmites on the top and bottom (now the left and right) sides of the piece using the maroon and white acrylics. I then mixed the fine pumice gel with the wet paint to construct the appropriate texture. This fine pumice gel gave the canvas a frosted-over look. The stalactites and stalagmites began to resemble snow and icicles.

Next, I tried to settle on a subject matter. Since the canvas reminded me of an ice cave, I thought about drawing a bear inside the cave. However, I wasn't sold on the idea and thought about other options.

For my 11th grade art concentration, I ended up drawing a series of human-to-natural-element metamorphoses (not elemental dragons like I originally planned). I was brainstorming ideas when I was working on this piece. I did not include this piece in the 12-piece concentration, but it served as a precursor to the concentration. I thought of the girl in this piece as resembling something between a stalactite and icicle. She would hang from the ceiling and her icicle hair would underscore the metamorphosis. The icicles on the initial background frame her unrealistically.