Some small test paintings

Since this is supposed to be an Art blog, I should post some actual art from time to time. Today I'm showing you some small (6" X 6") test paintings done on wood. Here, I was experimenting with making and working on a textured ground. I used sheet rock "mud", or wall patching plaster, as my texturing medium. As experiments will go, some are failures and some are successful.
For the texturing I spread a layer at least an eighth of an inch thick on the face of the wood blank. I could stop right there and let that dry hard or I could use a variety of tools and objects to scrape, scratch, and stamp into the wet plaster.
When the plaster is dry it can be further scratched or carved, or sanded roughly or smoothly. At this point you could even spread on more plaster here and there and working that until you are happy with the textured ground. I mix paint in with a modelling medium and use that to create texture in layers, in different colors, and then sand those down for interesting effects. 
For the painting: essentially, any means one would use to apply paint; using brushes or palette knife with very thick paint, adding even more texture. Very thin paints running into all those marks you made in the plaster. Paint can be brushed, troweled, rubbed, splashed, any way you can think of. These paintings are tests, so I'm trying not to repeat myself and I'm trying a wide variety of methods and color schemes. In the process I'm finding I like this small square format. It presents interesting possibilities.
(click on an image to see a larger version)

Under-painting and Over-painting black. I painted this board and didn't like it, so I painted it black and lightly wiped the paint off before it dried. I did that twice. Then I painted over the black in a few spots, and wiped that off . . . a few times.

Gouging and marking while wet. Dried. Then painting and varnish. Then sanding and scratching, revealing fresh plaster. Then more paint applied, and quickly wiped off, the paint soaking into the plaster but wiping of the varnished paint.

Deep, dense gouging while mud was wet, then several layers of paint followed by an application of  paint mixed with modeling medium applied with a trowel.

Thick layer of mud with a few deep lines incised, painted then dried. Then heavily sanded, flattening all the highest parts, exposing fresh plaster. Several more layers of paint brushed and airbrushed on, some simple masking involved.

All the texturing  here was done in the wet plaster which was dried before painting with no sanding or further altering of the texture. Many light layers of paint, applied with a brush or rubbed on with a rag followed that and resulted in this.

This one started with several thin partial layers of plaster. Cans pressed into one layer, straight lines incise another. When dried, paint was poured, rubbed and brushed on. For my taste, this is the best of the bunch.