I wanted, no, needed to paint this week. Most of the time I use my paintings to express fairly sunny subjects (or at least neutral), but even so, they sometimes help me work out my emotions, and with the somewhat abrupt loss of my cousin this weekend I needed to find a way to get those feelings down on paper.
I did an ink underlayer first, using Prussian Blue, Turquoise, and Payne's Grey. It came out way too dark (the inks are getting old and sludgy), so I had to repeatedly wash the paper with water. That both buckled it and overworked it, so that when I went to make the painting over the top it was hard to get definition without further ruining the paper. But the soft edges probably work with the subject.
Not a great painting, but it says what I wanted it to.
"Grief"—Daler Rowney inks, pencil, watercolor, on 140-lb. Fluid cold-press watercolor paper, 16x12 inches.
