Painting when wet, 1 of .........

It was snowing, and drizzling, and hail stoning on Easter Monday afternoon. I used the palette knife to scrape on the pinkish background, then, instead of blow-drying it, I painted on the branches wet in wet using quite a stiff brush. It was satisfying the way the paint was scraped away, and built up channels. Then I'd wipe the pink off my brush, and load it with a brown-grey mix, and work that in. I'm going to work over and over this one, so this will be the first photo of I don't know how many.

Plastic Pyracantha

I painted this canvas working from the pencil drawing I'd done earlier. I'd wanted to paint it from life, but I was busy with the children all day and then it got dark.

So, after tea, while the rest of the family watched Blackadder, I sat in the corner of the living room and painted, gently rebutting my four year old daughter's kind offers of assistance.

I worked in acrylics, because my husband has a bad chest and turps fumes aren't nice to him. Anyway, I only tend to paint with oils in the garage, or in the kitchen with the back door open for ventilation. And oil paint, turps and kids aren't a good mix.

The acrylics' drying rate was good and, at the same time, bad. Good, because I could use a hairdryer to dry the under-painting. Bad, because I got mixed results when I worked back over areas I'd only painted 20 minutes earlier. I need to read up to see what I can mix with them to keep them workable for longer.

When I'd finished this painting I immediately started preparatory work on a larger painting based on the nine charcoal studies I'd done. Fortuitously I had a ready-cut piece of board measuring 50cm square, perfect for 3x3 10cm blocks with a 5cm boarder. I painted the boarder in white acrylic gesso in an overlapping grid, which echoes my garden trellis. Now I'm pondering what colour to use as a background for the blocks. I may just use the neutral pink which I used on the long canvas yesterday, or I may use a range of tones. No, I want the Pyracantha branches to be the main feature, and varying the backgrounds will just be an unwanted complication. I'll keep it simple.

Oh, the title of this post comes from the fact that I used acrylic paints which are, after all, plastic.

Clock #3, put to bed

I much prefer the canvas this way round. Portrait ways up rather than landscape.

I spent about 5 minutes just looking at it, then I drew in some verticals, and added some lines to a vanishing point in what I think of as the middle of the clock face. Then I added some yellow and grey oil pastels, and drew the numbers in more detail.

I think it doesn't work because I have no idea what I feel about it, what I'm trying to portray here. There's no message or clear emotion coming from me. So I'm going to set it aside for the time being, and leave it until I think of something that could give it purpose.

Rip it up and start again

Well, that was the idea I got from reading An Artist's Journal yesterday, and the next step will be something to do with scruffy train stations, hence the blue and orange I used which reminds me of the Merseyrail Waterloo platform. That was a place in which I spent many hours whilst I lived in Liverpool. I feel I must add that I was there waiting for trains to various destinations.

So, I covered a canvas with burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and a reddish orange, and worked it in with a 50/50 mix of water and PVA glue. When I was happy with this (happy being a moveable feast, you understand) I ripped up the pastel and ink drawing of the yellow clock and glued it on. I was surprised about how strongly I felt when I was arranging the pieces. However, there's a piece on the left which curls and leads the eye out of the left of the canvas, so I'm going to need to bring the eye back on, or create an barrier on the left. I may in fact turn it round 90 degrees clockwise, putting the clock at the top instead of on the left and see how that works.

I'm interested to see how the glue dries with the acrylics. I've never mixed these before, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. You'll notice I'm still avoiding working on, or even talking about the big self portrait I started.

Finished canvas

Last night I looked at the canvas of the two torsos I'd started in May and could see what needed doing. So here's the result.

When I'd finished I looked at it in the mirror and saw that there was some imbalance, but after a cup of tea and a think, I decided to leave it as it was, because if I corrected each side to match, it would become sterile.

I also over-painted the yellow background with a neutral flesh tone, merging into the figures.

It's pretty much what I had in my head, which means this is the first painting I've composed and executed totally. I must sign & date it. I felt like staying up all night, ignoring phone calls, drinking lots off coffee, and starting another three canvases which I now have in my head. But real life demands come first.

Life is good though - I have a friend sitting for me on Thursday for some life drawing, and yesterday I stumbled across a chap at work who is a fellow artist & is eager to get together & share ideas. Life is very good.