muddy – Ink, Yarn & Beer

The Muddy Palette

Before I knew that gouache works best fresh out of the tube, I filled a palette up just as I do with watercolors. Let’s face it, paint ain’t cheap, so I wet these paints over and over. Finally, most of the colors are used up and it is into the sink to soak for now! In the future, fresh paint. That will be a really new event for me because I don’t tend to paint like that. I made swatch cards of all my gouache colors (more than 20, less than 1000), so I plan to use those as I consider paints in future paintings.

nktober #23: Muddy

Beds of dried, caked and cracked mud are fascinating. Footprints in them are even better, or the mysterious sliding rocks found in Death Valley. I looked at a lot of pictures of mud flats, and one thing I noticed were curves and angles as well as the way light bounces off their slightly uneven surfaces.

Here I used ink and water, specifically Private Reserve’s Copper Burst. I have never considered using fountain pen ink as a painting medium, but it’s opened up my eye to its potential.