Blog

Paper: Moleskin Art Journal

Paint: Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna

After my dish of humble pie yesterday I decided to change tactics and move into some larger slower paintings.  I prepared 3 of them today by stretching paper and doing the drawings.  I was completely intimidated by the paper stretching process.  Years ago I used the gummed tape that you wet with water and ended up with tape stuck to tape, tape stuck to me, and buckled paper.  This time I simply stapled a wet piece of paper to gatorboard and voila, the paper dried tight as a drum.  I thought that I should do some studies of the larger piece, so I brought out my trusty Moleskin journal then decided to simplify the whole thing by using two colors, ultramarine blue and burnt sienna.  Tomorrow I will do a full color study but I decided to see what would happen with the two colors and was pleasantly surprised.  I got a color range from saturated orange ( burnt sienna) to brilliant blue ( ultramarine blue) and then different degrees of orange - ish colors and blue-ish colors as I mixed them.  The most neutral gray mixture took on a greenish cast.  I think I will play more with this in the future.  If anyone wants to suggest other two color combos to try I would love to hear from you.

What I learned:

Stretching paper is not so scary if you use a staple gun.

A two color palette can be a beautiful thing!

Since I was more relaxed today I just focused on shapes and temperature and the painting appeared.