Futzing around

I haven't had any creative epiphanies lately—in fact, I've been struggling to come up with ideas of things I want to paint. So I went looking today at other people's art to see if something struck a nerve. I saw one I really liked, which was in acrylic and loosely painted, with a woman in a hat that covered part of her face but then faded into the background at the top of her head.

I found a bunch of different women in hats and thought I'd try it, but then I ended up instead with inks. I tried to prep an interesting background—I found a woman I wanted to do in all browns, but my browns are too close in tone and tint to make something interesting in contrast all by themselves, plus I messed with it too much and ended up covering too much of the white paper (leaving white patches makes for some great interest in a portrait). So I painted this woman fairly straight, although I gave her a double squiggly line and also let some of the paint run and move on its own to keep things looser.

After putting the ink border around, I decided to gesso on the outside of it and try for some kind of neat texture but I couldn't settle on anything that looked good—I kept trying things and wiping them off (the benefits of gesso). I finally covered it with gold paint, which came out looking sort of like a gilded wooden frame, which is kinda cool, though nowhere near as cool as I wanted it to be!

BTW, that brown splotch in the background was apparently a flaw in the paper that caused it to absorb too much right in that area. That almost never happens with Fluid paper; glad it was already a splotchy painting, because if that happened in the background of something pristine, whoa!

I'll try the impressionist hat trick sometime later.

"Brown Study"—Daler Rowney inks, Uniball pen, gel pen, gesso, metallic watercolor, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.