Summer Dreams by Carl Mazur

For this painting, I literally start from nothing and came to this. I was so surprised and excited because this is the first time I have ever painted on such a huge canvas before. This canvas size is 48" wide by 60" tall. Whew! I am really sore from doing it, but I am still pumped that I was able to even take on such a massive project.

My stupid pain comes from my degenerative disc disease and fibromyalgia. It makes life very hard to deal with at times. But, I am also thankful to God for the pain—I know that sounds weird—but it makes me very humble when I am in large amounts of pain. Not saying I want to keep it around, haha. No. But I am grateful for this journey. It's a process, kinda like the painting.

When I started the background for this, I used bleached titanium color acrylic that was really watered down about half way or more. Then I did the 4 corners of the canvas. You can tell it is a little bit lighter in the middle.

Then I really wanted to add some different texture and an accent color to the painting. So I took one of the crates that was on the floor and I put a bunch of metallic cobalt blue on the slat boards of the crate. Once I had enough paint on the board Then I basically stamped the design onto the canvas and then I pulled directly straight up. It made a really cool texture on the canvas.

For the little black lines that look like an accordion, I had a Christmas tree that was sitting in my storage closet and it had a bunch of ridges on it so I put a bunch of paint on it and then I rolled it onto the canvas creating the accordion style effect.

For the splatters I used paint that was watered down. There were a few spots of the painting where I had tried to use a pallet knife and put on some gold color but I realized that I made a mistake and so I took water and a rag and I rubbed a bunch of the paint off. What was really cool that I found out is that once I started to scrub the paint off it gave a grunge like texture to the paint and so I left the ridges of the paint on the canvas.

For the big huge sunset I used a metallic copper color and when I watered down the paint and I applied the sun rays The metallic paint made little bubbles on the canvas and I thought that turned out really cool. I also used a metallic gold to highlight some of the sun areas. Basically in the ball area.

For the clouds I used straight white paint that was thinned down with water and before it was dry, I applied some bleached titanium white for reflection accent of the clouds. Then for the bottom part of the clouds or the shadow areas I used a burnt ochre color and I also watered it down a little bit. I thought the shadows were too strong so right before the paint was dry I scrubbed off the burnt ochre so that it was only a paint that was on the canvas and it wasn't so heavy.

For the reflection of gold on the two little mountains to the left I used a paint color called Old Gold.

Oh and I forgot to mention... that when I was in the early stages of the painting is when I took a piece of blue taped and I stretched it sideways across the canvas and that is basically the ending of the landscape or where the sunset meets the land. Like I said, I really didn't know what I was going to paint so all of this just came to my mind little by little.

I was actually going to do something different with the blue tape. I started to make a black line where the blue tape meets the canvas and then all of a sudden I remembered what a friend told me that he loved sunsets and I thought to myself... hey I will do a sunset painting! Then to create the big ball of the sunset I used the Christmas tree base That was a half circle and I painted in the sun. Then I took the copper color metallic paint and I watered it down a lot and then I made the sun rays. I thought it was really cool because of the way the paint bubbled on the canvas I knew that it was going to dry really fun. At the time of me painting all of this I had fans going full blast to try to dry out the canvas and the paint as fast as possible. I believe that painting this grunge type painting that it's really fun to have your paint dry as fast as possible because it just makes it look more grungy.

There was one point towards the end where I wanted to darken up some of the pain around the edges, so I took a really watered down burnt ochre color and I kept dipping a paper towel in the so it was slightly wet and then I would dab it on the canvas. Sometimes the burnt ochre would be too strong and too dark so I had to grab a little bit of water and scrub some of it off or water it down. I kind of figured out that there were a lot of little places on the canvas that were drawing that were too watery looking so I had to dab them with paper towels.

For the cactuses I used a straight black acrylic paint and a paintbrush. I had AI help me out a little bit with the look of the cactuses. I'm not that great at drawing things so sometimes I struggle a little bit in that area. There were a few times where I had to come back and correct the cactuses because I did like them at first.

There were a number of times where I accidentally got paint on the really nice floor panels that I have in my apartment, so I spent a lot of times scrubbing the floor to get the paint off. I accidentally got paint on my speakers and my cabinet shelf as well. Then there was screw up when I went to clean off the crate. When I started washing it off in the bathtub, there was a green color that got all over the tub! So, I ended up spending about 30 minutes scrubbing the tub furiously to get the green paint off of the bathtub. And when you are in a bunch of pain the last thing you want to be doing is scrubbing a bathtub on your hands and knees or cleaning off paint from the floor on your hands and knees. It literally almost killed me.

That's pretty much all it took for me to do this "Summer Dreams" painting. I hope you enjoyed reading this because now I am going to go relax.

Carl