Without going into too much detail, it’s been quite a rough Christmas over here and I’m realising that I picked the wrong moment to do battle with new materials while so much else was happening around me. And the heat is drying the paint on the brush even before it hits the paper! I’d forgotten how difficult watercolour can be at this time of year.
Now and then we all face hurdles, and suddenly your creativity can take a nosedive. I’d like to confess that for a couple of weeks I’ve really struggled to pick up a pencil or paintbrush. And when I did, nothing worked due to that paper…
I finally decided I need to try being a bit nicer to myself, I have thrown the nasty pad of paper away (Yay!!) and now I’m slowly trying to recover my motivation and enthusiasm for painting.
It’s tricky… I began by just leaving my sketchbook on the coffee table, and having a look now and then. I did eventually pick up a pencil and scribble a bit – of course my hand won’t obey my brain, but not surprising really… anyway, I sketched Aysha (below) over several separate ten minute bursts. I’ve also been trying the sunset skies again, after failing last week. Interestingly, I tried so hard to make that old paper work that I can’t remember how to paint on good paper! So I’ve spent a couple of sessions just trying to paint washes and control the colour and water. Pictured are two of the new attempts alongside one on the old paper (on the right) – see how much stronger the colours are for a start… I was wasting heaps of paint on that rubbish and still only getting pale washes, a very expensive mistake.
And so, I’ve managed to dabble a bit this week and I enjoyed it, going back to basics and not expecting too much. I’m still not sure I’ll have anything ready for the show for past & present Committee members that opens next week at Project, but I’m happy to be getting paint on paper again.