The Hidden Gorilla

I’ve finished the experimental painting that I started on Thursday.

I’ve added more watercolour.  This again is mainly Prussian blue, Indian yellow, quinacridone magenta and viridian.  But now there are two more colours in there.  The skyline on the right has some cadmium yellow in it – it’s  an opaque colour and I wanted to change the shape of the skyline.  The other extra colour is titanium white, which I’ve used to glaze the sky a few times in an attempt to make the hills stand out better against it and to make it all look a bit misty (both of these were ideas from Ann Blockley’s Watercolour Workshop).  There’s also a bit of titanium white in the blue mountain on the left.  I’ve been quite heavy with the Prussian blue on the left as there was an odd ink lump on the second peak from the left that I wanted to disguise.

I’ve also added more inks but this time it’s just indigo, gold, waterfall green and sepia, although the sepia has long since disappeared under other layers.  I applied the ink a number of times to the mountain in the foreground with granulation fluid added to it, sometimes making it all run downwards, sometimes left to right.

As a landscape it’s OK I guess.  I think the blue and red mountains look great, the green hills in the foreground less so.  The sky and hills also have too similar values for my liking too – this wouldn’t look that great in black and white.

But what sets it apart is the hidden gorilla.  Once you’ve seen the gorilla, it’s like a whole new painting.  If you’ve read the previous post about this painting you’ll know where to find the gorilla.  The gorilla makes this one a winner for me.  Unfortunately the colours on this one have really deteriorated since I took the photo (and I wish I knew why) so the painting has had to be binned,