Making a Living part 7

 

When I mentioned my plan to go up the Studio today to continue my coloring process, my parents were a little confused.  After all, I was just there yesterday, doing the same thing. What I told by father was true- I will only get paid for this when it is done, so I do have a reason to want to get it done.  However, I do have one other reason to continue work on the print- coloring the proofs is the best way to see if I have enough watercolors to complete the coloring.  If not, I will have to order some new paints to finish the job, and that process takes about a week.  I went through what I had on small palettes last week, and found I have enough to do most of it, but I won't know except by putting down all the colors.

So with all that in mind, I drove up to Ocean Grove today, with all my painting stuff already in the car.  I planned another short day, so one or two more colors.  Perhaps some orange or bright red, colors I will need for this piece eventually.  However, when I got there, I found that I had no significant amount of either color on any of my small palettes, so for now that is out.  Two more colors to add to my eventual shopping list.  The next major color to do was an earthy red, used as an architectural element on some of the buildings, and I had a big glob of that paint available.  (could be a terra cotta kind of thing)  I started with my lesser proof, in case there were mistakes, and ran into a new problem- some reverse leakage.  As part of the concept here, I have used a relatively thin Japanese paper, and what this means is that the paint can leak through the paper and appear in other places, coming back through the page.  After a few such spots on the first proof, I put a paper towel underneath, and that seemed to have solved the problem.  This hadn't happened with any of the other colors done so far, so I don't know if it has something to do with particular color of paint (as an oil painter, I learned that some reds behaved differently from other colors, but never learned why)  or if was just applying it with too much water today.  With the second proof, I used the paper towels from the beginning and there were no problems.  

Music today was influenced by something yesterday.  I was in a local supermarket, and heard playing over the sound system a song I knew from the Jayhawks, and while the arrangement and words were the same, it was definitely a different version.  A cover?  A new recording by a later version of the band for a new label?  Anything is possible, but I didn't know what was going on.  Except that I have the version of the song that I knew on my studio collection of Jayhawks that I kept in the Studio, now one of the things I have at home.  So I listened to that disc today, songs from the first two major releases.  I have written about this before, back on this blog you can find it back on November, 2019.

No images to post today, as all my file photos show things either much further along than what I've done so far, or some completely different colors than what ended up being used.