Thursday 5 May 2016

Souping and gooping.

I've decided to not paint birds for a little while.
That's mainly because I was seeing them in my sleep
and all that fluttering and squawking was keeping me awake.
Now I have the dilemma of what to paint.
The water lily painting was okay and so
I'm embarking on a wet, dribbly, abstracty,
pondy sort of series.


Okay, I admit it was only cos I just couldn't think
 what else to paint.
I tried flowers but the old flower in a vase just isn't me.
I love the ones that other people do
 but I'm too much of a bull at a gate type of person
 to get that delicate look.
Then there was the landscape idea, it lasted two seconds.
Sorry, I just don't do landscapes.  
In fact I got a headache just sitting in front of the computer
trying to find something to paint.
So I thought stuff it....
I went into my painting room, picked up some old canvasses,
well one old one and one new one that just didn't work,
and just started to have some fun.
Hey, what does it matter if it doesn't work,
they were poopy paintings anyway.

All I had in my mind was loose lilies and dribbles,
well mind mind is pretty much all dribbles but now it's dribblier.
First I had to slop gesso over the  paintings, 
then the fun began.  
 


Remember this one, well it just wasn't doin' it for me,
so I went through my old bags of goop
and decided to use some up on the background.

Normally I'd be panicking and worried about getting everything just right
but this time I just let loose and had some fun.
There was goop going everywhere,
 I even got some on the canvas.

This is layer 692, if you count 
all the layers on the old painting.
Looks kind of yuk but I'm havin' fun and 
there's a long way to go.
Check out those delicious cracks that formed in the gesso.
Either the whole thing will fall off when I ink it or 
I could get some fabulous texture peeking through.
 
This is a hideous painting I did many years ago,
I know, what was I thinking.....
 
I slopped a little gesso on, mainly to stop her looking at me,
and then got out my old bags of gesso soup (secret recipe)
and had a ball.
 
Yep, that's quite a mess but oh the possibilities.
 
Now for the painful part, waiting for it to dry
sigh.........
 
Only 200 more layers to go and they're finished.
Simple!
 


 
 


Monday 29 February 2016

And now for something completely different.....

This weekend I had some time
to myself, which is really not the norm
in my household.
Well the truth is, I decided it was too
hot for housework, so I went into
my art room and played.
I've been toying with the idea of doing a really loose
almost (but not quite) abstract painting, just to see if 
my tightwad brain will allow my hand to do it. 
Of course I didn't know where to start, so I picked up my 
"left overs" canvas.  
I'm sure you all have one somewhere around.
It's the little canvas that you put all your left over goop,
inks and bits of stuff that are left over
 but you don't want to waste.
Mine was looking like this
 
 Yep, I'm with you, eww, ick and poo, so I got out
 my nice bright goop and did this.
(It's brighter than the photo but you know my crappy photography skills)
Now I have to say that I'm really proud of my brain for
 allowing my hand to slop that stuff on so loosely and not try to make it all perfect and pretty.
Mind you I did have Queen playing super loud, much to my teenage daughter's (she has no taste) disgust. I always think the loud noise cancels out the brain noise. 
Then came the hard part (for me anyway), 
the chocking under the little canvas.
You'd think I'd could get it right as it's only about 45cm across but no, I had to go and stuff it up as usual.  Too many lumps under the canvas, in hindsight I only needed one chock in the middle but there you go.
The ink was looking good at first ....
starting to flow nicely, so I added the other colours and 
the chocking disaster showed through. 
 The ink was flowing away from the chocked bits and
 straight off the canvas. After some rather colourful language I
 added some side packing and lots more ink.
It's dried better than I thought it would
 
and I have the most delicious ripples and
 bumpy wumpy things happening.


I'll probably play with it to brighten it up a bit 
(much to my teacher's disgust I'm sure). 
 But, I'll keep it loose.
Now for the hard part.... I might try this on a big canvas.

Oh boy, this could get really interesting and super scary.
There could be an almighty battle going on between little blonde, super tight arse brain and little left hand. 
 I'm going to have to have the music pumping at extreme levels.....my apologies to the neighbours.