Throw Things At It
Coming to the studio after such a long break ( a week), I feel out of place and light-headed. I look around and cut on the extra lights. Then I stare at a painting I was working on before I left. I thought I had left it in a good state...but as I look at it now...I hate it.
The color is all wrong. The "music" is wrong. The surface is wrong and yet....this surface has SO much history. I have been working on this canvas on and off for about two years. There are so many paintings underneath what is there now.
I have always had a problem with this size, 24 x 30". The size is odd for me. It seems to lend itself mostly to horizontal but I keep working it like it's a vertical....maybe that's the source of my problem...that last session I force myself to work it horizontal.....and now I hate it.
I want to white-wash it...with gesso or modeling paste or maybe I should drybrush with some neutral color to bring out the surface texture underneath the "dead" layers of paint.
I even looked for my carving knives. The surface was so thick that I could carve back down to reveal some of the previous layers......but I couldn't find them in my storage cabinet.
In my frustration, I tried to mark the canvas with pencil but the surface was too slick because it had too many layers of acrylic paint.
I tried my watercolor crayon....one color. That helped a little.
Next, I started throwing things at the canvas.... scraps of paper and old painting mat board palettes.
That's when IT happened.
A circle here....a square there....some bright white paper...all opened up the piece for me. It stopped looking dead to me. I walked around the room and kept throwing scraps of painted papers at it. I moved things around on the surface again and again.........until I felt HOPEFUL.
I have always had a problem with this size, 24 x 30". The size is odd for me. It seems to lend itself mostly to horizontal but I keep working it like it's a vertical....maybe that's the source of my problem...that last session I force myself to work it horizontal.....and now I hate it.
I want to white-wash it...with gesso or modeling paste or maybe I should drybrush with some neutral color to bring out the surface texture underneath the "dead" layers of paint.
I even looked for my carving knives. The surface was so thick that I could carve back down to reveal some of the previous layers......but I couldn't find them in my storage cabinet.
I tried my watercolor crayon....one color. That helped a little.
Next, I started throwing things at the canvas.... scraps of paper and old painting mat board palettes.
That's when IT happened.
A circle here....a square there....some bright white paper...all opened up the piece for me. It stopped looking dead to me. I walked around the room and kept throwing scraps of painted papers at it. I moved things around on the surface again and again.........until I felt HOPEFUL.
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