Barbs (crop)22 x 30 watercolour & acrylic ink
I'm calling this done as I think if I play with it anymore it will just turn to mud.I toyed with a couple of ideas for colouring the wire. One was to do a controlled pour, wetting the wire only and hoping a stream of paint would stick within the wet paper and not travel too far into the dry. The other was to use washes of loose watercolour to paint the wire.
I decided on the latter as my hands are still stained with inks and paints from yesterday's pour and I just couldn't face the mess again. I'll experiment more with smaller pieces where I can control the flow of paint into trays. Large sheets like this one will be reserved for outdoors in the summer.
I masked the area surrounding the wire and started adding washes of colour, leaving the white of the paper for highlights on the wire. In retrospect, I wish I'd left it at that, but of course, my inner brain told me to add more layers of colour. Don't always listen to your inner brain.
I ended up with a darkened version, some of which I like, some I don't. But its set in stone now and overall I like it. I can't get a good image of this. I'll have to take it upstairs for some good light to photograph it tomorrow. The colours are more vivid and the background greener in reality.
7 comments:
this looks darn good, Jeanette!:) Especially since you've just recently started pouring and this was such a large format. did you know you can also drop colors into your wet paper in selected areas during a pour using a brush? you can control things to a point this way and still get that wet, spontaneous look.
Thanks Billie. I'll keep practicing and working on some smaller pours. That's a good tip about using the brush. I'll have to experiment with that too.
I like it Jeanette - you are just full of experimentation this year...
What a wonderful description of art in action, Jeanette. :) I've never been game use a full sheet of paper for anything. I think you are heroic.
Perhaps not what I expected you would do when I first saw your sketch, but I do like it. The barbed wire has gotten a little lost in the rest of the painting but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing - it just adds to the abstractness.
Like Rose says...you are full of new experiences(it is contagious!) Great experimenting here again. I love your choice of colours!Good luck on the rest
ronell
Rose, experimenting leads to all sorts of new discoveries about things you hadn't considered before. I'd highly recommend it.
Robyn, I don't know about heroic, foolhardy perhaps :) I just had the urge to go really big. And its fabulous to do so.
Jan, this sort of took off on its own and told me what do to. Its very different from my usual style. The barbed wire actually does stand out quite well against the background in real life, even though it does have some similar values. I can just never get a decent photo of it!
Thanks Ronell, experiments are the road to discovery. Some good, some not so great, but all a learning tool.
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