Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works

You can read my experiences trying to learn to fly here.

Nefarious dried tube of paint which ruineth thee.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I'm working on painting a portrait of David's dog. All sketching and foundation drawings went well. Then I reached into my haphazard and messy container of paint tubes (following my usual expert-colorist system of grabbing a random tube of paint and basing the entire piece from that) when I pulled out the Sand In The Gears, Wrench In The Plans, Befuddler Almighty tube of paint.¹

The paint was basically on its last moist legs, thick and disgusting, and squeezing it out of the tube would have made many juvenile males, ages 14 - 36, laugh at what it looked like.

I'm so cheap. I couldn't just throw it away. And, since it was the tube I pulled out, habit was to use it as the "central" color (if Old Gold can be thought of as that). I hacked and squeezed and pinched and cut that metal tube, finally getting a significant amount of paint out on the palette. David had ordered a large portrait. It would take a lot of paint.

I then began experimenting with various acrylic mediums and water mixtures, and soon found myself spreading and brushing and scraping the paint into the paper. It was then that I realized I was having what I call a New Technique moment.

New Technique moments are generally terrifying and destructive to projects that would normally take me much less time. They consist of some slight change in controlled setting in which a brush goes haywire, I spill something, I grab the wrong mix to use, or I get it in my head to "fix" a mistake by using some odd material (for example, wall paper paste - very unusual results). Suddenly, I must confront Something New Is Happening Here, and figure out how to work with it. I have to change and adjust my absent-minded way of going about things.

"Should I maximize the effect with resist techniques? Preserve the undertones using gloss mediums? Paint over it and let it show through faintly?" I thought, mulling the second layer of David's painting.

New Technique moments are absolute musts. If you don't have them as an artist (or writer), you've happily entered the sad land of Rutville, a place where everything is done the same as before. A comfortable place. Very boring. Usually ends in beige.

I must apologize to David for how long this painting is taking. He probably won't even notice the Excitement! and Amazing Effects! and New Techniques! since, if it is to be a good painting, it shouldn't have all those exclamation points. In fact, it should have only one: "Julie, I like this painting!"

So, I struggle to come up with a way to handle the foundation left by the dried and fussy Old Gold, very much interested in what will become of this metallic-sheened painting which differs highly from the normal dog portrait route I've traveled in the past.

I think it will be lovely. And different.

(Is "lovely" allowed, for dog portraits?)

-----------------------------
¹ Technically, it was Winsor and Newton's Galleria Series, Old Gold.