Splatter Me, Elmo

All righty then, lets say you're working on your latest production, figuring "this is the one, this is my break through masterpiece..me, Manuel El Boffo, I'm a natural born watercolor geenyus." Well, you should know better cuz this is about the time it all starts to go wrong. Very wrong or a little wrong either way, now you have the opportunity to play, to fix, perhaps to retrieve from the clutches of doom your unsinkable confidence. Or you pitch it out and start again...I am a fixer upper, a salvager, an inveterate reclaimer...a cheapskate and stubborn. So what, you say?

Well, this is what:

Exhibit A

I would just carry on and paint on the back of this but I already have, this is on the back of a sheet of 140 arches cold. Its rubbish, so I decided to play with "splatter". Seemed like a good pic to use as an experiment/demo.

I have tried to push my darks and created an area on the left that is too dark and opaque. So splatter it is. You can use a springier bristle synthetic round or whatever. Any opaque colours will do and you can mix them with Chinese white or not.

My favourites are cobalt violet, cerulean blue and Naples yellow. The cads co-operate too. You can splatter with darks, say f'rinstance a mix of ultramarine and burntumb.

Just tap your loaded brush with your pointer finger and you are in business.
You can splatter with a big brush or a rigger into wet paint or dry. You can also flick your wrist and really let 'er fly.

Splatering is useful for colour variation wet in wet or in transition areas where you want to soften the border. It works for highlites or details. Cover the area you don't want to splatter with scrap paper and let'er rip.

This painting is still rubbish but it does show how splatter can be used. That you can splatter light over dark if you have a passage that needs lightening or detailing.

West Coast Logging Camp Abandoned

Just doodlin' doodlin, sink me...odds fish, bink me.

The Hideaway of Miss Alice "Dish" Kreshin

Even though I made it up, the memory of this place is burned indelibly in my mind. When I was about seven, my mom was scandalized on account of the ol' man allowing me to accompany him to this exotic locale for a little reconnoitering regarding an estimate for some concrete work and possibly some welding. He had been asked by Miss "Dish" as she was known, to maybe build a vault for the considerable proceeds from this shadowy operation, just in case of any attempts at unauthorized withdrawals. My mom wanted to know just exactly how she chose him..."lucky him" as she put it.

A little background on the "Dish" is in order. From what I can gather, Floyd Kreshin came home from Dubya Dubya Two with a bad case of the "traumatics" and it wasn't improved when he discovered his b'loved shacked up with a certain bad actor, name of "Wrecker Walt". They were holed up in this beat down hotel turned "House of Ill-Repute" carrying on a brisk biness. So Floyd lit out for more salubrious surrounds, leaving Alice to her own devices.

Alice being both pretty and able to keep a confidence was nick-named, "Dish" which when combined with Kreshin formed Dishkreshin (discretion). She conveniently became "Miss" again after Floyd beat it outa town, even though she kept his name and probably was still married legal-wise.

Eventually the operation shut down, due to law enforcement niceties and the alleged violation of social mores. Restraint of trade, more like it. Walt used the yard for storing impounded heaps after Alice cleaned out the vault and he had to go back into the towing biness. I remember the smell of smoke and alcohol and perfume that soaked the place even though I visited during off hours...

Sidehill Sentinels

This is another version of Tin Clusters, just working out the idea. " Bink" to explore the inner workings...

Impasto Watercolour

Gesso or White Acrylic, Slip Sliding Away

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I opened the bottom drawer and took out my jar of gesso, it was solid as an ice cube but not as inclined to melt. So I slapped a coat of white acrylic on an old failed painting and played...I think if I sanded the white or varied the brush strokes a little when shellacking on the white it might be something I could work with...

The Grass Grows Under The Chuck

I live on the coast of an island. We have purple sunsets. We have grass that is underwater at high tide. There are log sculptures on the beach that escape from booms and trees that fall from the cliffs and end up either branches down or roots down. Sometimes we can walk under these trees. This is my imaginary version of an island beach, artistic license and creative editing at play, just some fun...

Tin Clusters

When I used to go hunting wrecks it was an almost mystical experience. I would find clusters of heaps that seemed left just for me. Here's a double cluster in epiphanic illumination...

One painting or two, these images are primed for the catalogue...

Yellow Fascia

Come on now, you know its not going to be flowers...fascia board on a house.

This house looks old but it ain't. There are stranger people in the world than me, a few, which is either reassuring or disappointing. One of them is the guy that built this house. He fiddled and fussed with the finishing and the deterioration caught up with him. The house is less than twenty years old and the onliest thing that has survived with its spirit intact is the yellow trim and that is fading fast.

Pulp Fiction Painter

Now you know that I have no patience for bucolic scenes, that I can't sit somewhere and plein air a bunch of cows. Its just no fun for me unless I am batching up a scene of my own..mine all mine I tell you, my little kingdom where I am...oops sorry, dee-lusions of grandeur..

The fun for me is to just doodle up something and then make a pic. They are goofy, I know, but thats half the fun. I am a second rate pulp fiction painter...

This is my first sketch of this compo, to see if there is any hope...I need shadows and some more detailing. I love the chaos, the clutter, the shapes the motion...the story.

Chrysler in the Dell

Bink me!

Ghost Train

Sidetracked

Odd's Fish, Bink Me!

Sketching

I need to have a breezy sketch style, quick and fun on the ol hot press... bink to blow, up....

Angry Barn Threatens Derelicts

Just playing on hot press slippery paper. Cropped to get fun compo...Bink to explore the domain of uninhibited colourplay....

Landscraping

High Water in the Slough

This is my idea painitng, just trying to work out the compo... bink to see the inner workings...