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A quick paint
Jul. 27th, 2005 07:23 pmI haven't been doing as much painting as I should. But the opportunity came up today.
I've been doing a bit of tidy up in my room. Or rather, rearrangement. Hunting down the bank statements I need for my tax, and I move the rubble around looking for them. A pad of canvas sheets came up and I left them propped against my art case for a few days, meaning to put them away in oh, maybe six months or so.
They got me thinking, I suppose, about the little watercolour sketches, I sometimes do on the back of padded envelopes when i ship books off. As it happened I had a parcel to send off, and I thought, hey why not do a postcard-sized sketch?
A subject, hmmm. I thought of two appropriate images, and a bit more thought gave me the appropriate combination. But I only had an hour before the post closed, and I wanted to get it off today. So I got out the little pad, drew the main design in calligraphy pen, and wet the background area, dropping in splashes of various blues wet-in-wet, trusting to nature to mix them around and make a fuzzy pattern.
It would have been better if I'd had more time; I got out the hair drier and blasted the canvas with heat before working on the interior. It had to be bone-dry before taking the next step, and I'm afraid the airflow mixed the splotches of pigment a bit more than they should have been mixed. Nor did I have time to tape the sheet down, so there was a bit of buckling and pooling going on. I then worked on the interior colours - another set of pigments, this time in shades of red and crimson, and again the hair dryer blew them together.
I should have known better. I did know better. Trying to fix them with another few splashes of colour after the canvas was dry merely gave me some very obvious tidemarks. I would have been better off starting over, but I just didn't have the time.
I might have another go tomorrow - I didn't even have time to take a picture before I packed it off.
But it was fun. I enjoy painting, and I should do more of it.
I've been doing a bit of tidy up in my room. Or rather, rearrangement. Hunting down the bank statements I need for my tax, and I move the rubble around looking for them. A pad of canvas sheets came up and I left them propped against my art case for a few days, meaning to put them away in oh, maybe six months or so.
They got me thinking, I suppose, about the little watercolour sketches, I sometimes do on the back of padded envelopes when i ship books off. As it happened I had a parcel to send off, and I thought, hey why not do a postcard-sized sketch?
A subject, hmmm. I thought of two appropriate images, and a bit more thought gave me the appropriate combination. But I only had an hour before the post closed, and I wanted to get it off today. So I got out the little pad, drew the main design in calligraphy pen, and wet the background area, dropping in splashes of various blues wet-in-wet, trusting to nature to mix them around and make a fuzzy pattern.
It would have been better if I'd had more time; I got out the hair drier and blasted the canvas with heat before working on the interior. It had to be bone-dry before taking the next step, and I'm afraid the airflow mixed the splotches of pigment a bit more than they should have been mixed. Nor did I have time to tape the sheet down, so there was a bit of buckling and pooling going on. I then worked on the interior colours - another set of pigments, this time in shades of red and crimson, and again the hair dryer blew them together.
I should have known better. I did know better. Trying to fix them with another few splashes of colour after the canvas was dry merely gave me some very obvious tidemarks. I would have been better off starting over, but I just didn't have the time.
I might have another go tomorrow - I didn't even have time to take a picture before I packed it off.
But it was fun. I enjoy painting, and I should do more of it.
