Vessels: Conceiving the Plan
mixed media
I called my mom this morning and spent three hours talking to her. Where does the time go? While I was on the phone, I took another look at the watercolor I did a couple of nights ago. Ugh. It was just as bad as I remembered. I figured, since I was gabbing and my hands weren’t busy, I may as well try to salvage what I could. I diluted some gesso and splashed it over the paper, let it sit for a bit, then blotted up the excess. That lightened everything and left a milky, mottled cast to the image that I quite liked. You can see the remains of the effect in the lower left-hand corner.
I then got out my Pitt pens and played with the shading. I did some cross-hatching, which helped, but not enough. However, I made a discovery. I was using my grey brush-tip pens and decided to do some washy shading on top of the cross-hatching. The under layer of ink melted and smeared. Hmmm. Pitt pens are permanent when water is applied, but apparently the carrier in the pen itself will melt already-dried ink. That makes sense (otherwise the ink would dry up in the pen, right?), but it hadn’t occurred to me before.
So then I played around with laying down dark areas and using the lightest brush tip pen to melt and redistribute the ink. Oh frabjous day! I really like how the final image turned out. It’s not perfect, but I’m pleased that I was able to salvage it. I think it’ll make a nice addition to the Vessels book.
red paper boat 