must-post-to-blog....

No, I haven't been very active lately. But I have been thinking about stuff...

A while back I wrote about wrinkle paint and how to achieve that. I also found out that some people use household paint for humongous (sp?) pieces and they got really nice wrinkles sometimes. Well, the pieces I'm thinking of also have about 1" of paint on them that could have something to do with it. However it may be, I was curious about how painting with inexpensive household paint would feel. So I got some. Standard oil-based Ace hardware paint. I got only a few small cans. I knew it was much more liquid and drippy (just shake the can to test that). Now how do they build up thick paint films with such a thin paint? I still don't know! But I have a suspicion that those artists might mix in a lot of stand oil and maybe other additives as well. Or build it up in many layers? Or both.

Anyway, today I played around and it turns out this is really fun. Because they paints are so much more liquid they naturally lend themselves to "Pollock style" drip paintings, which was my first experiment. Then I let the paint run. Then I drizzled linseed oil and stand oil over them. Then sprinkled coffee grounds and sand. And so forth. You get the picture: a wild experimentation session.

In any case, some of the effects I got are quite interesting. Because the paint is much more liquid you get some almost watercolor like effects where colors run into each other and mix a bit. Not quite like water color of course, but it has a bit of a watercolor feel to it, if that makes sense. And I have the impression it is still changed as it is drying.

The stuff is still drying (and stinking) out on the balcony. I'll post some more in a few days when I can assess the damage, so to speak. I predict that the paint will wrinkle where I put a lot of extra oil in. Let's see. Next time I might also mix in some cobalt dryer. Stay tuned.