Sunken Plates

I don’t usually work with acrylics, let alone on canvas, but after doing some gel printing recently I had an idea for a piece which lent itself to mixed media and collage rather than watercolour.

[Image ID] A mixed media painting of two decorative plates in the sand partially buried in the seabed. [description end]

The starting point for this piece was this set of circular gel prints I’d made which I thought looked like old plates. As I thought about what I could do with them, I remembered seeing fragments of plates from shipwrecks in documentary programmes I’d watched in the past and thought a sunken scene would fit it well.

[Image ID] A photo of six different plate-like circular prints including those used in the painting [description end]

I can’t really explain the ‘process’ for this painting very well as it was very much an experiment with mediums I am unfamiliar with. The plates are collaged onto the canvas after an initial layer of blue paint, and the coral and shells in the sand at the bottom were done the same way but using the print from a napkin. It’s quite fascinating how glue causes the white parts of the napkin to turn transparent such that it’s hard to tell it has been collaged on.

I used some grit paste to create the knobbly texture in the sand as well as in the white ‘foam’ at the top of the painting. After I had finished glueing pieces on I continued to paint on top of them to add shadow and lighting which made them look like they belonged in the scene. Finally, I painted in the green seaweed with a thin brush.

Artwork ©Dragonsflyatsunset 2026, all rights reserved.