Path To The Lake

I was in an experimental mood today. Ā I dug out the gesso and thought I’d have a go at applying it to the paper in stripes rather than all over. Ā In this painting, I applied it in vertical stripes, added some salt and, in a moment of madness, some plain flour.

And after it dried, I did a painting on it. Ā I put zero thought into the subject matter, ending up with a generic landscape with a point of interest that was far too near the centre of the paper. Ā And I’ve forgotten how to do trees – I’m back to primary school and drawing a circle on a stick. Ā This all just reeks of lazy painting. Ā I’ve just assumed that my transparent primaries (quinacridone magenta, transparent yellow, French ultramarine) will produce something vibrant without any effort on my part. Ā Well, the news is they don’t.

Other colours on there (not that I care) are burnt sienna, raw sienna and burnt umber. Ā Plus spatters of titanium white and cadmium red at the end. Ā And at one point I put in some cadmium yellow in an attempt to brighten things up a bit. Ā That’s eight colours in total. Ā Ridiculous.

As for the gesso, it adds a bit of interest with those vertical stripes but it needed a proper painting on it to really test it out.

This one was an unmitigated disaster. Ā It has been cut up to be used as collage material.

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