Full-Blurring Boundaries: A Classical Approach on top of an Abstract Approach (Acrylic Gel Transfer, Pareidolia Painting) (Patreon)

I started this painting with an acrylic transfer of a printed image, then used pareidolia to let images suggest themselves to me, painted what I saw, then started refining the piece. The gel transfer is kind of an abstract approach, used a lot in collage and printmaking, and the pareidolia painting is a more abstract and surreal process. But then I go into traditional methods of painting with refining the composition and values and building up layers of color glazes.

The acrylic transfer was the funnest part, if you want to try it at home here's the steps I took:

• I printed out a close up image of a boulder (remember that the transfer will be the reverse of how you printed it. I didn't care if this image was reversed, but you might want to mirror it in photoshop for your project)
• applied a layer of heavy gel acrylic medium on to the canvas (I have since learned that Soft acrylic gel works better)
• put the image face down on top of the gel.
• Flattened the paper with a Brayer
• waited for the gel to dry
• applied water to the back of the image
• started peeling the paper away from the image.

The gel absorbs the ink from the print and when the gel is dry, the ink is embedded in the gel and the paper peels away from the image. This only works with certain kinds of ink and paper. It works with magazines (although I've yet to try that) and with laser jet printers. I've never tried this, but apparently with inkjet printers this doesn't work.