The beauty of substrate

Ever since taking Emma Pettit's class, I am super conscious of paint usage. Her continuing mantra throughout her painting process is "Don't waste paint!" to the point where she will say, "Just take whatever is left on your brush and scrub it over the surface to give you some nice texture—use it all up!"

So, when I finished a painting session on the recent large figure portrait of Johnny and George and had a bunch of colors left sitting on my palette, instead of balling up the page and throwing it out, I got out a 9x12 piece of watercolor paper and my brayer (roller) and made a background (substrate) to use for a future painting.

The problem with these backgrounds Emma teaches is that sometimes they are so pretty that you don't want to cover them up! I didn't expect the combination of Naples Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Lemon Yellow, and a little bit of Payne's Grey to mix so agreeably, but when I was done, I thought Ooh! What can I paint on this without covering it all up?

My solution was to impose an image taken from a black-and-white photo, and only paint the lights and darks, leaving the substrate to show through for all the neutral parts.

I'm not sure whether I feel like this is a success; for one thing, since the light was coming from behind her, the biggest highlight in the entire photo was the neck, which is always an awkward place to put such definitive white strokes and leave them unblended! It probably would have been better painted in inks or watercolor, but I wasn't sure I could even do that, over the top of an acrylic background, so...white and Payne's Grey acrylics, and a dark blue Stabilo All pencil for a few defining strokes.

"Substrate Woman," 9x12 inches.

And then, of course, I had white and Payne's Grey left over, so now I have a new substrate...