Part 5 Project: Adding other materials, Exercise 4: Mixing materials into paint

I mixed rice, sand, eggshells, rice and gravel individually into a number of mid toned paint colours.

To test them out further I decided to find out how they would translate a painting.
A3 sized gessoed mountboard. Rice was the only material I didn't use. As with the previous exercise this one is imaginary.
Before beginning I contemplated Anselm Kiefer's landscapes of high relief textures.
http://seaofgray.com/2011/10/13/the-commonalities-of-salt-flats-and-anselm-kiefer/

I was attracted to the muted palettes and decided I wanted to use a similar palette to that of Kiefer's. By some coincidence the colours were similar in the materials I had already pre-mixed with paint used for the inital test pieces. The mix of black and burnt sienna acrylic around the perimeter came about as I was thinking of a frame of some kind, reminiscent of so many Howard Hodgkin paintings, some impression of looking out or into something. This combined with other elements seems to set up a kind of ambiguity, which is one aspect I find interesting.  I had secured the materials before applying the dark paint around the edges and the remainder. The sand/rusty orange mix, I spread on with a painting knife/plastic card and scratched through much of it with a blunt knife blade. I extended colours of the high relief mixes into other areas, leaving scattered white patches from the base layer. To this I added watery pale blue dripped from a brush and allowed it to run down the board.
As  I approached completion reminded me of a volcanic landscape. An application of pva in selected areas brought out a little more interest.