Preparing a new book, backgrounds

The process in a lot of my illustrations starts with a random background. I wanted to film a tutorial of this but for now I just can't find the time. Periscope is all nice but it implies always struggling to keep enough space on my phone and the end result is not really very good.

Anyway, basically it's about using several layers of acrylic paint, diluted to the consistency of a thin pancake batter. And about sloshing it about with various tools.

And very much like pancakes, the first one is always "for the pan" meaning it sticks and looks weird, you need to makes a series and things start to happen, fun effects and colour.

Odd mixes that can give interesting results

Depending on how dry the previous layer is it will produce different results

These are just bad iPhone photos but it gives an idea of the result

Sometimes you want to keep these as they are, maybe the could sell as abstract art, he, he. But I usually use them to paint other things on top, it gives me a first structure to work from, even if most of this will end up covered with more paint.

Since I don't have a lot of time to paint at the moment, I make a couple of these each evening and will keep going until I have a dozen or so. Then I will start to draw more thumbnails for the book and composing the illustrations before I get to paint them on these backgrounds.

Feel free to ask questions if you want to know more