1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)

I wanted to do something today that didn’t involve using a photographic source. The idea was that I could watch the World Championship Chess at the same time but as I write this one up I’m realising that the chess has just been going on in the background and not getting any of my attention. Oh well.

anyway, today’s project was one that’s been in the offing for a while. I had a couple of scallop shells sitting around waiting to be painted. I think they might be left over from an M&S Valentine’s Day meal. It felt appropriate to me to paint a couple of seascapes. This would result in a pair of paintings that sounded like the sea when held to the ear. Very Heston Blumenthal.

I prepped my surfaces last night. Sanded down the insides of the shells, painted on a couple of coats of watercolour ground, then put in some cracklepaste using a palette knife.

Today I started by flicking through the Nita Engle book for inspiration. Then I got to work. I started with French ultramarine, Winsor blue (green shade), Mayan blue genuine and viridian in the sea and then raw sienna on the beach. I tried to bet the colours swimming together by spraying on water but found that the water and pigment were pooling in the bottom of the shells. This really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. I dabbed out a lot of the wet paint with kitchen paper.

Then I tried out a relic inks: indigo and waterfall green in the sea and sepia on the beach. I dripped on some granulation medium, hoping to see some action but was again disappointed, seeing the inks pooling in the bottom without leaving interesting trails behind them. So I dabbed everything dry with the kitchen paper again. The only evidence in the final painting of the acrylic inks is in the beach, where the sepia has muddied the colours. In retrospect I shouldn’t have bothered with the inks. Or maybe even the crackle paste.

Some colour was starting to stick around, though, so I had another two or three tempts at adding watercolour, strengthening the colour before dabbing out the puddles. I used the same sea colours throughout but started to introduce some Indian yellow and even cadmium yellow to the beach in an attempt to brighten it up and reduce the muddiness. I also started trying to paint on the foam with white gouache but kept getting those annoying puddles. And at some point I sprinkled on some salt, not just to induce granulation but also because this is supposed to be a painting of the sea.

Eventually, though, I was happy with my sea and beach colours and just needed to add the foam. I decided that the colour needed to be quite strong, so used a palette knife to add paint direct from the tube. The grooves in the shell helped me smear the gouache outward in all directions and maybe the crackle paste helped out a bit here by making the smears less regular than they’d have been on an unaltered shell. As a finishing touch, I spattered on some more of the white gouache, then left everything to dry.

This one was a lot of fun and I think anyone looking at the brushstrokes in this one will be able to see that. The worst thing about this painting was how messy the process was, something evidenced by the other side of the shell. Maybe I’ll clean it up with some turps. Anyway, it’s going up for sale. To see the price, click here.

And, as I said earlier, I had two shells to paint; the sister painting is in the next post.