Google Earth and Resin!

So I wasn’t sure if I had posted about making paintings based on Google Earth images before but I don’t think I have so I will do so here!

Anyway, I had the idea a few years ago when I was in Spain and I was looking for somewhere to visit by using Google Earth to see where I could spot some kind of lake nearby. It turned out that the images that I could see were ones that I thought would make really great abstract paintings by just using them as inspiration.

As the area I was looking at had lots of undulations and various buildings and things that gave the picture height, I thought it would be a great way to incorporate some texture as well.

I ended up doing a series of 4 paintings (all sold now) which mimicked various views of the area I was in, just south of Madrid.

These is a collage of the finished paintings:

This is one of the screenshots that I took from Google Earth as a guide for the painting in the bottom left of the four. As you can see it wasn’t intended as being a replica but just as an inspiration for the painting.

I used the same texture as I normally do to build in some extra height and contours to the paintings but I guess you could do a similar thing without using any texture.

I have in my mind that I want to do more series like this and I also have some ideas in mind about what sort of terrain I am looking for. In fact I searched around the world on Google earth to find a particular kind of image that I wanted to create that had a lake in the middle with some kind of barren land round it.  I did actually find what I was looking for in the depths of West Africa but unfortunately my iPad died and I lost the location of that area!

In the meantime I decided I would create it as I remembered it but with some tweaks. I wanted quite a muted background color but with some gold or silver leaf on the ‘hills’ and with a deep blue pool of water.

I created a pool using some heavy texture and allowed that to dry and then poured some blues and greens in and once dry, I filled the ‘pool’ in with some resin (I have been working  with resin for the last year or so and have started to do some pouring paintings with this recently but also wanted to combine it with texture so this was my first textured painting idea).

Anyway, I am pretty happy with the result – it really does look like a pool of water from above (well I think so anyway!) and the texture really keeps the resin contained.

It’s quite difficult to capture an image of the painting but here are a couple from different angles so hopefully you can see the effect of the resin (the painting is currently hanging in my lounge before going into an exhibition at the beginning of next month):

I have tried out a couple of resins and I have to say I have found Art Resin to be the best (doesn’t turn tacky after completion and easy to mix as it is 1 to 1) and also it is easy to get hold of in different quantities, particularly in the US.

A similar one in the UK is this one below which I have on my list to try out next as it seems to have the same qualities. Let me know if you have already tried it and if so what you think: