Thursday, April 21, 2011

fractal aesthetic: in progress

I've had a bottle of frisket -- a masking liquid especially designed for us water-based painters -- for probably six months now, but today was the first time I'd ever used it. I'd used frisket back in high school and bought this bottle when I saw it on sale somewhere. Just in case. You're supposed to be able to place it down, paint all around it, and then rub it off leaving clever white space. Considering my deep pulsing love of white space you'd think I'd use it all the time, but the kind of detail I need is a little more dexterous than my goopy frisket can manage. I could thin it a bit with water I guess. Frisket also ruins brushes so I'd have to sacrifice one of my nimble thin ones, and I go through those quickly enough without all that. So I usually just eyeball the white space, connecting the invisible lines where I need them to be. A bit more brain-strain and sweating, but that does mean I have a bit more flexibility with my white space.

fractal aesthetic: sketch

I don't use pencil lines when I paint. I've never been able to satisfactorily erase pencil out from under yellow or other lighter colors without smudging or making them completely gone. I don't even sketch with pencil actually. I tend to draw with a pen -- a particular kind of pen that I really ought to start buying in bulk or looking for refills online. And then I just take a blank sheet of heavy paper and just go for it.

fractal aesthetic: in progress

This is a fairly brash way to go about things, and when I first started doing things this way I wasted a LOT of time trying to figure out how. But at this point it's just the way I work and seems natural.

fractal aesthetic

Which is a good thing, since I've a table full waiting to be finished.

Next up...