Oh, and before I continue on to my actual topic, I should admit that I rather like today's pointless photo. Gotta love that patterning.
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On the other hand, I hate painting.
All right, maybe hate is a bit of a strong word. It'd be more accurate to say that I find painting frustrating, I guess.
Part of it is that I have the brush skills of a five-year-old, true, but I think I've developed enough of an eye that I could probably get past that fact long enough to develop some actual brush skills at some point. I could, that is, if it wasn't for the WAITING.
Yeah, that's right. I can't handle waiting for paint to dry. Short attention span, remember?
I play around in watercolours and acrylics occasionally. That, and kids' tempera paints when I'm in a silly mood. I probably have a lot more fun with the temperas, to be honest, because I just can't take them seriously. Go ahead, Dee. Make a mess. That's what they're there for.
Anyway, I do dabble in painting occasionally, and I'm almost always guaranteed to get frustrated with it because just when it seems like I've got an idea of where I'd like to take a painting I end up waiting. Waiting for a wash or a base layer to dry. Waiting for light colours to dry so that I can add some darks on top of them. Waiting for everything to dry so that I can peel off masking fluid and see what the effect is.
Erm... yeah, I'll admit that masking fluid is one thing I like about painting. Masking fluid is fun. It kind of reminds me of playing with rubber cement in school. Our glue stick kids today don't know what they're missing there, really. Imagine how much more fun they'd have with a bottle and a brush. Yes, messy as heck, but still. Rolling perfect glue balls off the desk? Good luck doing that with a stick, boys and girls.
Sorry. Distracted myself there. And, as you've probably noticed, that's more or less my problem with painting. My attention span's waaay too short for painting. I've had more than one time that, by the time I've let something dry for a few hours (or sometimes even minutes, sadly), I've moved on to something else. Lost interest. Taken out my pens or my pencils again.
The funny thing is, given the right circumstances I can muck about with smudging pencil marks for hours at a time. It's because I don't have to leave off. If I have an idea, I can use it right away.
That keeps me interested. Painting doesn't always do that.
Maybe I'll have to try playing around with some wet paper effects sometime. You know, the kind of thing when you're doing everything quickly on wet paper. Five minute painting instead of bothering with layering.
I might be able to pay attention long enough for that.
Believe it or not, all of this is by way of saying that I have a partially completed painting at the moment that, if I don't totally screw it up in the next phase, may actually do for the staff show I've been muttering about. I did the wash last night, figured that it was pretty much buggered, and set it aside. This morning, though, it looked ok enough to bother adding in the next layer. Next layer after that? Well, I'm switching to pens so at least there'll be a higher comfort level. It may just work, folks. And even if it doesn't, at least I'm doing something. That's a lot more useful that worrying that I'm not doing anything, so I'm happy.
Ish.
It wouldn't do to be too happy, of course. Forget about the blog turning into a pumpkin; happiness might just make it completely disappear...
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