Blue Skye

After reading that Jane Betteridge book, I thought it was time to start painting on some unusual surfaces.  First up was painting on a map.  I bought a ridiculously cheap book of U.K. road maps from The Works to provide me with backgrounds.  I tore out the page with a map of Skye, glued it onto mount card using 3M photo mount spray adhesive, allowed it to dry, then painted over it with Daniel Smith transparent watercolour ground.  After leaving it a couple of days to dry, I ended up with something I could paint on.

Having restricted myself to portrait format, the best idea I could come up with was a mountain climber with a foot on the Cullins and a hand resting on the Northern tip of the island.

I painted out the figure first using raw sienna, planning to drop in quinacridone magenta and then French ultramarine wet into wet – the same way that I’ve seen Hazel Soan paint elephants.  What I found was that the wet into wet didn’t behave the same way as it does on watercolour paper, which was a shame.  So there was a lot of layering and water spraying involved in trying to get the painting to work.  I also added some big salt crystals, which also didn’t behave like they do on paper, riddling my climber with holes.  I used titanium white and sepia to try to add highlights and shadow to the climber.  I painted in some hills with French ultramarine and a bit of quinacridone magenta and did some spattering with my three primaries just for the hell of it, allowing it to run in places.

And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this is a failure.  The figure drawing (especially the raised left leg) is poor – most of it was freehand because pencilling an outline against the map background was difficult.  Wet into wet and salt techniques didn’t work well on this surface (maybe I didn’t make the watercolour ground thick enough).  I think the spattering and the places I allowed it to run worked out well though and are worth repeating next time I do something similar.