Golden's Polymer Medium is what I coat finished journal pages to seal them. It dries glossy and takes the tackiness out of the page so I can close the book and not worry.
Visit Illustration Friday for next weeks word. It's GIANT!
Pajama Party Wednesday click HERE
So here is my paisley painting from hell. It started off quite nice. I am using Suzi stamps, the gigi and pooey and the mermaid. From Unity. (not available yet cause Suzi gotta design the packaging). Click on photos to see them large.
Pretty pretty mermaid. I had such high hopes.
So a mermaid, let's put her in the sea. Oh but the word of the week is Paisley. I searched through my scrapbook papers and used PPA to glue them down. PPA Glue (Perfect Paper Adhesive) is wonderful for gluing paper so it has no wrinkles.
Now here is where it first goes horribly wrong. Rather than going out and looking for blue paisley paper or even making my own, which is what I wanted to do but was crunched for time (draw out paisly and hand paint. Very pretty hand made papers) I got the idea that paisley looks like waves. So I decided to have a pink ocean.
Kinda already looks like lava doesn't it? Kat, who sat across from me, never said a word about the fact that my painting looked a lot like the pit of hell. That's because she was secretly getting back at me for screwing up the lemon bread. (I ran out of flour so had to add a cup of, well, chose to add a cup of, Buckwheat pancake mix. Hey it has flour in it.) Bread tasted like Poo and she wasn't going to forgive me. Even after I drew a little girl for her to color and paint!
So here we go into the pit of hell. Hold on, it's hott!
Ooh that's a might big pink amoeba looming!
Adding the elements. At this point I have no idea how to make them combine all together. What should have been a pretty happy little painting looks like a Peyote induced pink paisley nightmare.
Pooey is my cat that passed away a little more than a year ago. He had Kidney Failure and for two years I gave him IV fluids every other day. At the end it was every day. During his last day she said he could have them twice a day but I couldn't bare sticking him with the needle that much. It was time to let pooey go. He was my first pet as an adult and I had him for 15 years. Just me and pooey, holding hand and paw in bed, sleeping and dreaming. He will forever be part of my imagery because he means so much to me. I now have adopted a stray kitty, who is orange and looks somewhat like pooh, he refuses to come into the house. So he sleeps in my sun room and eats in there.
It's a mess cause I just moved and everything is in boxes. It's not nice to live this way so I must hurry up and fix this area up soon. Back to the painting that can't be saved
I need to integrate all the paper elements and designs, so I put a wash of blue paint over the sky.
This kinda made everything even more busy though.
I even added little Pookie to the mix thinking that would somehow make the crazy pink ocean look any better but it didn't and I said KAT THIS IS THE PINK PAISLEY PIT OF HELL AND I DON'T WANT TO DO IT ANYMORE. And I look over at Kat, who is happily painting little gigi's and girls from my stamps and template...
And I said KAT DEAR WOMAN I want to paint pretty paintings too so I started on something new.
I gave her a pink paisley because at this point I still couldn't give up on the theme even though, I realized, I HATE PAISLEY.
And then it got dark out there was no more pretty light to paint by so I had to stop. And so what have we learned? This is what it is like as an artist. And if you do not paint everyday or are knew at it it is like this a lot. Sometimes it would be 3 or 4 horrible hell paintings before I got to one that worked. You have to stick with it. The good does come.
And you are not your bad paintings. You are not your good paintings either for that matter. It just shows your current skill level and state of mind at the time. Sometimes you are ON and everything is lovely. Sometimes, even though you want so badly to make pretty things, everything is garish and not fun to look at. Sometimes you aren't in the mood, sometimes you are not paying attention (colors can run amok if you don't stay on top of them), sometimes you just don't know what you are doing. These are all okay. You might be tempted to tell yourself, "See, I'm not a real artist." But you are. A real artist takes chances and makes mistakes. A real artists works. As long as your hand is moving the paint brush you have joined the ranks of every other being that has stood in front of a canvas and painted. No different are they from you, you from them. We make art.
You can also say there is no bad art if you are looking at art from a healing point of view. Making art purely for expression and process is not the same thing as trying to make something pretty. Neither is more important than the other and to me, the best art has both elements in it. I want to look at beautiful things but I want them to mean something.
So try your hardest but don't be too attached to the results. There is always tomorrow and another chance to do it again. xoxo
