First Go With The Artgraf Colours: Candle

My idea, based very loosely on two or three ideas from the Bill Buchman book, was to throw down three loose outlines, first in yellow, then red, then blue without worrying too much about whether they were all in exactly the same places.  Then to dilute my marks and see where I ended up.

I started by putting down a pencil outline as a guide.  This was a big mistake.  How were my three coloured outlines supposed to be out of sync with each other in places when they were all trying to follow pencil outlines?  My second mistake was to add too much colour.  I should have learned from my experiences with Inktense pencils that I need to apply minimal levels of colour before adding water.  But I became obsessed with another idea from Bill’s book, which was to add some swooshing lines with the edges of the blocks to make some of these body parts look cylindrical.  This would have been a great strategy using charcoal (which Bill probably was doing) but not with a dilutable dry medium.

When I came to wet the paint (using a combination of water flicks, wet towel dabbing and brushing with water) I was shocked to discover just how much pigment I’d put on the paper.  These Artgraf blocks contain loads more pigment than even Inktense pencils.  With the amount of pigment I’d used, everything went opaque and a bit muddy, although I could see that there would have been some great colours in there if I’d used the blocks properly.  I tried adding more of the yellow, red and blue in places by using the blocks like watercolour pans but only got very marginal improvements.

Overall, there’s some looseness, energy and colour in there.  All the things I was wanting to see.  But they’re all more muted than I’d like because I’ve used too much pigment.  This one was successful as a learning exercise but not as a painting.  I need to have another go at something similar and see what happens when I hold back a bit more.