The Big Drip...

I have been known to have flighty weeks every now and again

  okay... pretty regularly if I am completely honest

  but this week has been all over the place mentally

  I haven't been able to settle to any one thing 

  my brain has been flitting from thought to thought like a hummingbird on roids

I blame the drippy chairs for this sad state of affairs

I have spent all week trying to work out how to scale them up and paint larger versions

without having to do the whole soak and stretch paper to keep it flat

but have been plagued by paper buckles

which could be graded from mild in some cases all the way through to truly mountainous

I could try the old iron and heavy book trick

but I am always scared of doing that and the whole possible burning down the house thing

so I am trying to find just the right combination of paper weight and paint application

these paintings take a lot of moisture to create 

and finding the right combination is meaning lots of experimenting

which is never a bad thing, though there has been moments of insane frustration

followed quickly by awesome yowzer moments, followed by more frustration

ahhh the joys the are the rollercoaster of creation right

I could have made my life easier

and used the 640 gr hot pressed paper that I favour for huge watercolours

those suckers take more abuse than any paper known to man

and stay so flat and perfect it is mildly freaky

but for some reason in my brain I decided that it just wasn't white enough

so I have tried creating them with different papers

both stretched and unstretched

thick smooth white paper in 5 different weights and brands,

 and even a lighter weight paper... as if that was ever going to bloody work

and finally even had a play on Yupo

but to be honest Yupo sort of does my head in a bit

something about that plastic surface just feels mildly wrong

I even tried different paints

high pigmented ones

normal ones

and finally even the Peerless liquid colours

I even hunted out some inks

and played with different combinations of all of the above

the studio has been looking like some giant threw up paint everywhere

my hands look like I am wearing technicolour gloves

and most of the clothes I have worked in this week

have little dots of colour splattered in lovely outlines

courtesy of my apron just not being up to the task

so these are the closest I have gotten to results that don't make my brain hurt

Of course you know what I am going to do next don't you

yep this morning I have pulled out the 640 gr paper

and it is quite white actually

so I am going to get in and do some on there

which is what I should have done in the first place

but then where would be the fun in that

happy painting all...xx