Recently I finished a group of twenty acrylic paintings on canvas and posted them to my website at artbylt.com/gallerynew.htm. Since I was then out of canvasses, I began painting on 22" x 30" archival watercolor paper, taping the paper to pegboard with a border that would make the final paintings 24" x 18". The paper I am using is "cold press" which means it has a rough texture, unlike "hot press" which is smooth.
Working on paper is very different from working on canvas, and it is taking me some time to adjust. The paper seems to want a thin wash of paint that takes advantage of its texture and ends up looking more like watercolor. Paper is not as forgiving as canvas, which makes me less free when I paint on it. Yet, because the paper is a lot less expensive than a canvas, in some sense I should feel freer to experiment.
I have been experimenting, and one I did this morning became mostly mud. I applied a lot of thick paint in contrasting colors, but I didn't like the static nature of the composition. I am used to painting loosely, which allows interesting accidents to happen. When I went over this painting with a wet brush in order to stir things up, I quickly had the whole thing covered mostly in a greenish mud, with gaps of the original colors showing through.
Maybe I should have stopped then, but I wanted to learn as much as I could from this experience, and to test just what I could do to salvage it. I applied thin black lines to outline some of the light areas, then drew thick red lines directly from the tube. I added some thick black as well, and punched up some of the light areas with a transparent orange.
"Wow," I thought as I stood back, "this looks like a painting I might have done forty years ago." I put it aside. Tomorrow I'll take a fresh look, when it is dry, and see what can be done.
So far, I think the first two paintings I did in this series of paper paintings have been the most successful. I wasn't trying so hard then. I let the surface of the paper dictate what I needed to do.
Now I seem to be fighting it.
Here are the first two paintings, Chances and The Fling:
