The Queue Grows Bigger

South Shields Boatyard WIP

(mixed media on board, 12 x 12 in.)

I suppose one of the reasons so many pictures are lining up waiting to be finished, is that, with acrylic, it doesn't just sit on the palette allowing me to stick a brush in and work with it whenever I like. It dries up and I have to put out more paint from the tubes.

To avoid the need to put out a little paint to finish off a painting, I'm inclined to put out enough paint to start a new one, then use some of that paint to finish off a waiting picture. At least that's the plan; what tends to happen is that I push on with the new picture until I run out of time to do anything else.

Oh well, who said the life of a painter would be easy?

This new painting is not making me happy, at least not yet. I started it the way some painters do, by applying pieces of collage papers to a ground, then working into them to get at the image I'd decided on. I'm not sure that's a method that works for me. I'd rather have started with paint, then applied collage as appropriate. As it is, I have some areas I'm uncomfortable with: the thinner papers have buckled ( a brayer may fix that) and there are edges showing that I find distracting (whether other viewers would do so, I'm unsure).

I think what I need to do is proceed on the assumption that it has a long way to go and more layers need to be added to give a more complex surface. If, in the end, I really don't like it, I'll at least have learned something from the process.