Fishy

Fishy is how my attempts to use gesso turned out, yesterday and the day before. One portrait (Joni) worked beautifully three days ago and then, for no understandable reason, the next two gave me hell. What a difference it makes when all your media cooperate with you! After two days of struggling with gesso backgrounds, I went back to using just the staining inks and watercolors on untreated watercolor paper and wow what a pleasure it was!

I created a background, I drew and inked, I painted without bleed, and everything worked. I made this piece tonight in half the time it took me to make either of the paintings from the two days before, and I would say that it's so much better than they turned out to be. No beading up of paints with rough textures and spots, no discoloration or adulteration of the paint by the ink, no resistance at all (and it's not sticky!). I'm not saying I'll never try the gesso background again, but it will take a series of experiments to solve the problem before I go there.

This is a two-days-late little birthday surprise for my friend Kj Allison, who did me the immense favor of pretending to be a fish in a photo with her daughter on Facebook. I hope her daughter will forgive me that I replaced her pretty face with this cheerful goldfish and his little buddy giving us the side-eye. I couldn't resist either of them, once I searched Google for some good fishy pix. Kj had plenty of nice photos with her smiling into the camera, but hey, these paintings are supposed to be wonky, and what's wonky about a smile? (unless it's an evil one, or vaguely threatening, which Kj's were not!) So Kj is swimming with the fishies (but not in THAT way!) in underwater glory. I adore these Daler Rowney acrylic inks! They stain, they blend, they glaze...

I feel like shouting "I'm BACK!" But it's after midnight, so I'll just do it here in capital letters.

Pencil, Uniball ink pen, Daler Rowney acrylic inks, watercolors, collage, gesso, on 140-lb. Strathmore watercolor paper, approx. 7x10 inches.