Another Experiment

I’ve been taking another look through Ann Blockley’s Watercolour Workshop over the last couple of evenings, so was in the mood for another of those experiments where I just create an abstract letting the paint do all the work, then try to turn it into something mor realistic afterwards.

I’m halfway through now, having created this abstract background.  I started with some directionally spattered masking fluid.  One bit came out in a big glob, which I scraped some lines into – that’s the big white bit down the left.

Next I painted over it all with the triadic left trio (Indian yellow, Prussian blue, quinacridone magenta) which was so successful in that sunset a few weeks ago.  But I also invited viridian to the party.  That’s mainly down the left with some blue and yellow added in places.

While the paint was still wet, I added some acrylic inks (Earth red, sepia, indigo, waterfall green and what little I had left of gold).  I dropped in some granulation fluid and tried to get the ink to move around a bit by tipping it around.

And then I chucked on some salt down what is the right hand side, put a crunched up bit of Easter egg foil in the middle and wrapped it all in that transparent spotty textured crinkly paper that French sticks come in.  I didn’t put any weight on top today – I just sat there and watched it dry while kicking myself for forgetting to add some bits of torn up watercolour paper on top.  Oh well.

And here’s how it all turned out after removing the salt and masking fluid.  There are some interesting table salt effects against the pink in the bottom right but these are a bit too subtle compared to everything else to be able to attract attention.  I like the scratch marks in the big masked area on the left too.  There’s maybe a bit too much of the Earth red ink in there though, and I did have trouble getting the waterfall green ink to run around.  And maybe there’s too much green down the left, both from the paint and the ink.

What to do with it though?  I could turn it 90 degrees to the left and try to turn it into a landscape but that feels a bit too obvious and the colours fit the subject too well.  Instead, my favourite idea for now  (and I’m going to keep thinking for a couple of days) is to keep it this way round and turn it Into some sort of simian looking face staring out to the right.  Or turn it upside down and turn it into an orang utang.