This Creative Week: June 27, 2025
A gorgeous new painting created with LAVA!
Happy Friday, art lovers!
This week I completed a new painting based on an amazing photo that I took this May while visiting the gorgeous Big Sur area in central California, while on a photo safari scouting future paintings.
I'll never forget that evening... driving down a tiny, dark, winding road at sunset that was barely one lane wide, arriving at the beach parking lot, then... my jaw dropped when I saw this otherworldly view!
So get this... this week I found and used a new material that allowed me to create the most realistic looking waves in this piece: coarse lava gel! This is basically ground-up pumice stone in an acrylic medium.
I painted this lava gel onto the wood panel (well I technically sculpted it!) then it dried hard. After that, I was able to paint it, starting with a bluish mid-tone, then moving to shadows (payne's gray) and highlights (transparent white).
The result is PHENOMENAL! You have to see this in person and touch it to believe it. It's part painting, part sculpture, so the ambient light adds its own highlights and shadows to the peaks and valleys in the sculpted water!
Check it out here: https://jameshoneycuttart.com/products/20250624001
I'll for sure be using this lava gel technique in future paintings... stay tuned!
Jim