A SOLO EXHIBITION BY AERIN
10PM, Aerin, 2019.
24"x36", acrylic on canvas.

Although I wasn't using the wash technique exclusively yet, I did develop that technique while making this painting. I'm sure I'm not the first person to use it, but I was never taught how to use it, I just started doing it on my own. I can't remember why I started using water to thin my paints, maybe someone else in the studio suggested it. However, once I started doing it, I was like, "Oh, this is great. I'm not doing anything else anymore."


As this closeup shows, I also wasn't making trees in my signature blobs quite yet. The background, far away, trees are textural brush marks, which I don't use super often anymore. The closer trees are obviously similar to the trees I do now, though. They're just silhouettes, only defined by the snow on them. I still use that basic method, however, now I'll make the shapes a little more asymmetrical and random looking, as well as defining the shapes more clearly. These snow spots kind of just look like stripes, and I've strived to have my snow blobs look more like clumps nowadays.
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This was the second painting I made for this series, it is based off of a memory but it is also very fantastical. On my commute to and from school in 2019 and 2020, there was a water tower that I could see through the trees in flashes. It doesn't look at all like this painting, but the image of a water tower in the woods was so interesting to me that I was inspired to make this piece.


I used digital studies to help me visualize the perspective of this piece. Since it was one of the earlier paintings I was still developing my sense of perspective. So I definitely needed the extra help that digital art afforded me. I also used the digital studies to figure out how to use the lighting, This piece is not lit the same way that the ones after it were. Rather than only using layers of thin wash, I used solid areas of color and then used the wash to blend it out.