Out of my comfort zone!

I’ve painted long enough to know that I prefer using Schminke’s Phthalo Blue over Winsor Newton’s French Ultramarine or Cobalt Blue, so I don't know what possessed me to start a painting with French Ultramarine Blue! Well, I am definitely now, out of my comfort zone!

Let me back up a bit. First, I am learning that to be an artist in a Morro Bay gallery, I need to be sensitive to the fact that many of the people who visit the gallery are tourists, and they want to take home a reminder of their visit to Morro Bay, or California. Armed with that information, I thought I should paint something Morro Bayish. I’ve enjoyed seeing the brown pelicans enjoying life in the Bay, and so I thought I would paint a pelican on a pier piling, with Morro Rock in the background.

I sketched out the drawing, transferred it to my watercolor paper and thought, hmm, it has been a long time since you’ve painted a sky using French Ultramarine Blue. So I did. I painted a rather dark sky, waited until the sheen was gone from my paper, then grabbed a paper towel, wadded it up and tried to lift out clouds. That is when I remembered that French Ultramarine Blue is a staining color and there would be no clouds in this sky. Well, once I realized what I had done, I had a dark sky, in a color that I don’t love, and the rest of the painting before me.

I tried to ignore the sky and focus on the rest of the painting, but the big, dark, blue sky was like a Grace Jones face on a Grace Slick body (see previous post) and I just kept thinking, “well here is one for the trash can.”

If you know me you know that I am not a quitter, and so I thought,“what else can I do with this

painting?” And so I grabbed the scissors and cut the painting in two, and this was the start of a new experiment – a collage!

I haven’t worked out the details of the college yet – I don’t know if I will simply attach another piece of watercolor paper to the back of the pelican/Morro Rock piece and paint in another sky, or if I’ll get crazy with it, but I will keep you informed of the progress. (Don't worry, I'll work on the water too!)

If you have any ideas for finishing the piece, please contact me.

Oh well, I guess I had better get back to the laboratory…I mean studio!