The Light Water
This turquoise painting began its journey at the start of this month.
It now has about 3 – 4 layers on it.
When painting the first layer, the paint started to ‘sink’ towards the middle of the canvas again. At first I was disappointed with this persistent effect, and I started to manipulate it and discouraged the paint from settling in the middle.
I then had my crit with tutors and fellow students, and I talked about this continuing problem. The best solution seems to be to work on unframed canvas and then frame it once its finished, therefore working on a completely flat surface.
However.
One of my tutors suggested I could turn this problem into a positive and let the paint make vortex like shapes one the canvas.
So,
I decided to try this out on this turquoise painting. I made the canvas quite damp, and with some blue, white and green paint (keeping the colours light and calm), I poured it on to the canvas around all of the edges, and watched as it flowed into the middle.
I finished by adding a PVA layer which mixed with a little of the ink on the bottom layer and created a few ripple like shapes.
I love the finished image, it’s a much brighter painting than any other I’m working on at the moment. The name of this painting comes from a book I’m reading called ‘Pisces Rising’, where the area of the sea between the surface and about 100ft down or so is called the ‘light water’.
