I took a photo with Instagram and added a filter, I love how it looks with the amber glow. This feels like its getting close to its final state
I started to apply warm tones to areas of the white wash. I was working the middle white space and it just kept moving around. I found other areas doing the same thing. Something was wrong. I thought about why and realized that I have used a bunch of different materials and haven't thought about them working in harmony.
I primed with Gesso and sanded and repeated three times. The surface was so beautiful and smooth. I started with melted oil pastels. I used turps to move it around and create areas of transparent colour. I used more oil pastels and painted in some acrylic with gel medium and some mixed with varnish medium (for acrylic) .
Layering over this and that, scraping back, varnishing sections and smudging oil pastel with turps with no apparent plan or consideration of material compatibility has caused the whole thing to be unstable. Bits and pieces chipped off, peeled off and just didn't work. I started to feel like this painting is a metaphorical self-portrait.
Being a Virgo, I couldn't stand it and I made the drastic decision to start again. I began to scrape back all of the layers...
I'm glad all of this has happened. I like cropping the painting with photos, it focuses on details and I often think of making a series of large paintings from the photos - almost like a physical, historical remnant of itself, a visual history of the paintings past lives.
The other amazing thing is that I am committing to know my materials so that I can use them all together. I'm going to have to start recording the process in a journal... yay :)
