Using the paper

I had a few odd bits of paper left over from various portraits lately, because I ran out of my 9x12 pad of watercolor paper and am cutting down from 12x16. That means I have a few pieces that are 12 high and either seven or eight inches wide, which doesn't seem like enough to do much, especially because I don't ever tend to paint small. But I saw a photo in a Wonky friend's vacation pix that I thought would be fun to try, and it was able to be fitted into an extremely vertical format, albeit with no border to speak of.

I compromised on this one between trying to capture likenesses and going wonky, so it's kind of a hybrid, with a few wonky elements but mostly a straightforward portrait. I went back to drawing directly in ink without pencil first for this one, as a necessary exercise of a skill I need to keep.

I tried and mostly failed to do a thing for the background at the top: I have a new stencil with a bunch of random words on it, so I picked out a few that seemed appropriate for vacation mentality (happy, curious, great, etc.) and put them down on the paper first in gesso, then covering them with ink afterwards. It probably would have worked better if A. I had done a thinner coat of gesso, B. I had let the gesso dry longer, and C. I had used a dark background color. Oh well, live and learn. I'll try it again soon.

This is Corinne and her hub, on their recent vacay. Uniball pen, Signo white gel pen, gesso, and Daler Rowney inks.