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Monday, April 11, 2011

Time to Take The Time

When it's eighty degrees and sunny, no one was staying indoors Sunday. In weather that looked and smelled of Summer,(minus flowers, green grass and trees with leaves), I cut back the roses and reread Watercolor Painting Outside The Lines; A Positive Approach to Negative Painting by Linda Kemp. Today, I ran a couple of some tests on the Reeves watercolor pigments I've been using. The lifting I did with Three Women made me curious about the properties of each pigment. It was time to take the time to take a closer look.

However: I don't know what to make of the bleeding test of the staining pigments (on the right). And I had difficulty "reading" the results of the opacity/transparency; staining and lifting test (below). Pigments that weren't supposed to be staining stained. Pigments that were supposed to stain lifted. Amount of drying time and the pressure of the rub seemed to make a difference--enough of a difference that perhaps I should run the test again? As for coverage, that depended a lot on what hardness/softness of pencil was used for the scribble; I have nothing to fear from my 3H lead, my studio standard. My conclusion: skipping these tests when I first read the book might have been a wise move? I came away with nothing but questions.


WEEKEND HAIKU:

I'M FAT. IT'S FACT.
NO ONE KNOWS BUT MY CLOTHES,
HANGING REMINDERS.
PITCH 'EM!

4 comments:

  1. You must be a very patient person. I've only glanced over sections about pigments - way to eager to use them...

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  2. That was me till today. It will be me again tomorrow. Very tedious. And I didn't get anything out of it--just the knowledge that there's a lot of variables--too many to waste any more hours--better to error as I go.

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  3. Now now--patience. The authors have to make a living too. God love em! Now lay their books on the coffee table and sneak down into the studio and start slingin some serious paint! On the other hand, I'm still trying to think of something intelligent to say about Zen (and so's everyone else I suspect).

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  4. Bill you make me laugh. I flipped by those test pages so many times glancing through this book, and stuck those women under the faucet almost as many times, I figured maybe I could learn something here without chapping my hands. I learned I can color in a rectangle with no streaks. It would have been quite a Zen experience if I
    wasn't stuck in "mindfulness" thinking of course it's going to bleed, it's watercolor.

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