I own a lot of art-making supplies and equipment and I haven’t made good use of some of it (talking to you, etching press). So while I took a break from attempting and failing at linocut cards, I decided to pull out my elderly stock of Flashe paint and test drive it on the printmaking paper. Well! That was fun!
The first thing I did was a very messy and overworked still life of some unposed table clutter. Not my best work 😁 but what a blast. Oils are slow, ponderous things that you can push around for days or even weeks before they dry. In contrast, Flashe marks were drying as I was making them. My brush was racing to finish a stroke before the paint froze on the bristles. This outrageous drying time was what turned me off of acrylic paint when I tried it years ago but I’ve gained enough brush miles to be able to handle the pace now. The key is to work at warp speed, use a lot of paint, and don’t waste time mixing on the palette.
I tend to modulate oil mixtures on the palette for ages before applying them, taking a Goldilocks approach with temperature and value. “It’s too cool. Now it’s too warm. Now it’s too dark…” Getting to “just right” can be a slow process but oils give me all the time I need. Flashe had me grabbing colour off the palette after a cursory swish and smashing it onto the paper. If it was wrong, I smacked a thin, modifying layer over it and relied on optical mixing to achieve the colour I wanted. There was a lot of smashing and smacking!
After letting off steam with that first attempt, I rotated the paper and put this on top. It’s an image I’ve been painting over and over in my series workshop online at the Winslow Art Center so I’ve already explored it pretty thoroughly in terms of shape, colour and and value. All those demos were like a rehearsal for this painting and it flew off the brush. There were even brief milliseconds of wet-in-wet mixing in the torso which I celebrated with a brisk “wow” though I never broke stride. It was an all-out sprint.
Before calling it a day, I blocked in a quick underpainting of a portrait that I’d also used in the series workshop. Again, knowing the composition in advance was helpful.
I went over it with oils using the same methods that I’d used for Flashe: minimal mixing, lots of paint, super fast.
This piece makes me happy. It’s bold and shows casual confidence - something that great haste can convey if you’re lucky!
Pretty good for an afternoon’s work and it got me thinking.
My most recent piece at the top of this page is “Autumn Sun” and it’s informed by these experiments in colour and speed. It’s oil but I used it like Flashe, forcing myself to make quick decisions, to layer until I got the colour that I wanted, and to edit ruthlessly. I think it shows me some possibilities for future work. More than that, it’s pushed me forcefully out of my usual work habits and my brain is fizzing with possibilities. I’m keen to see what happens next!
Happy painting!
Love your color use
Pretty sure I can give this a try with my plentiful supply of acrylics!