New Technique

before

after

One of the techniques taught in Acrylic Revolution (which I can't recommend enough for those that enjoy working with acrylics) is creating multi-layered effects. You cover an entire painting with soft gel (gloss), then paint on top of it. It's supposed to give the piece a 3-D look (my words, not the authors). I used an old painting to test this on and it was a LOT of fun & very relaxing.
I don't care for how the entire area (that I put treatment on) is glossy. I've bought some more soft gel, but this time I purchased matte, not glossy. I must say however, I do intend on trying the glossy again on a painting I'll do with flowers, that should be pretty; photographing it, on the other hand, won't be so fun. (p.s. Sorry about the glare. I tried to get rid of it, I really did) And granted, this piece could look really nice if I had put the soft gel on all the water area. That's the good thing about experimenting on a painting that would've otherwise would have been trashed.
One problem I'm foreseeing is that while you're painting on the gel, you can't see the background. So if you want to add flowers to an area that has leaves, you won't know exactly where the leaves are. I suppose you could do small sections at a time.

Everything but yellow

A new technique I learned, it's just called "plastic wrap" though. hahaha It really is in a book I got that has a lot of interesting techniques. The book is Acrylic Revolution by Nancy Reyner; it's the most common sense art book I've bought to date. Anyways, the blue/green colors in the background are from my 1st attempt at another of her techniques "alcohol dissolve" which didn't work for me, I think the paint dried too quickly & it still has to be wet. (even though I did the alcohol dissolve part right after I painted it) One thing I've learned, if you do something & it doesn't work, don't throw it away, use it for another project... which is exactly what I did with this!
This particular project just focuses on the pink part on top. You paint the background & let it dry. Then, you mix Acrylic glazing liquid with acrylic paint. Use either a 4:1 ratio, or something like that; lesser the ratio, stronger the paint that comes thru. The one I tried to use (just by eye, no measuring) was 4:1. So once you mix the paint & glaze, you apply it to the background. Immediately tear off a big piece of plastic wrap & crinkle it up, then unwrap it & apply it to paint & press down. Let it sit for awhile, I think I let this sit for 45 mins or so, don't let it dry all the way. Then you simply remove it & you're done! It's fun, easy & it looks pretty cool.
I'm going to apply another technique I'm trying on top of this & we'll see... maybe that'll be my project for next week!  :)