CREATING ART THE AMATEUR WAY

A couple of weeks ago I painted a total disaster in my Strathmore watercolour journal and I had a choice of ignoring it, cutting the page out, or trying to fix it.  I couldn't possibly ignore it, it would have bugged me forever. I didn't want to cut the page out without at least trying to remedy it. The original artwork itself was unfixable but I applied a lot of water and lifted as much paint out of the paper as I could. Bear in mind that this journal is not cotton and it does not play nicely!  I was left with very pale colour, a couple of fine unremovable lines, some stubborn gray sections right at the bottom, and a piece torn out of the paper where the masking tape ripped the top surface off.  I thought about what was left on the paper and decided it had to be a seascape so I went at it with Holbein watercolours and did the best I could. The palm tree could be better (it hides some horrors!) but there is a point when you just know you have to leave it. It all could be ...

I used Holbein watercolours for the first time in the same Strathmore Journal that I used to paint the abstract in Mission Gold. It turned out beautifully, like a NASA image of the Orion Nebula but I don't think they are quite as 'in your face' as in the Mission Gold abstract and many of the colours had to be forced to travel although the blues did very well. I wanted to share it as it is presently, although I may tweak it a little, or a lot, at some point with black ink or perhaps even with metallic paints.  This is a NASA image of Messier 42, also known as the Orion Nebula, see  External Links NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team