Experimental fail

Jenny Manno, one of the artists I follow on Facebook, has had a monthly challenge this year to paint a fairy, using a particular color and doing it in the style of a particular artist. This month's is the Aquamarine Fairy, and she is supposed to be in the style of Vincent Van Gogh.

Now, first of all, the idea of Vincent painting fairies is pretty far-fetched; the people in his paintings are mostly salt-of-the-earth farming people—women with pink muscled arms picking fruit in orchards, old guys with beards and postman hats. But beyond the subject matter, there is the question of the medium: Vincent painted in oils. He rendered everything in tiny strokes of color set side by side to create a particular texture.

I'm able to go with the fairy as subject matter, but I didn't want to desert my chosen medium of watercolor (or ink). I knew, however, that a Vincent look-alike wouldn't be something easily pulled off using a paint whose main characteristic is that it runs and blends into everything else instead of remaining distinct.

So I decided on an experiment: I thought that if I textured the paper first with gesso, using tiny strokes all over, then after that dried and I applied my watercolor, the undercoat would give the painting that distinctive texture. The problem with that, I remembered halfway through this experiment, is that water media tends to bead up over the top of gesso. Using it in small quantities for things like the whites of eyes is one thing, but painting over the top of it when it's a solid layer means that you have little to no control of your medium, if its main ingredient is water.

I managed to paint the fairy, but she looks nothing like Van Gogh-style, and she also doesn't have much finesse. I was so focused on the colors and technique that she came out rather vapid! Fairies should be ethereal or evil, rather than looking like a bored teenager staring at a screen.

I pulled her together a bit by using a black line around everything, but subtleties of coloring were impossible to achieve when half the paint wouldn't stick to the page. And because the gesso coverage wasn't complete, there's also the problem of leprosy-like spots on her arms wherever ink hit paper....

We have until March 31st to achieve this challenge; maybe I will try another fairy, without the gesso, and maybe I will give in and do it in gouache or acrylic. Maybe.

"Sad Aqua Fairy"—gesso, ink, watercolor, pen, on 140-lb. watercolor paper, 9x11 inches.