Another little tangent I find myself mooching along is I am doing some painting.

I’m not much of a painter to be honest, so it’s an experimental tangent at best. I’ve bought myself some acrylics, and I’m spreading it about. The forms, lines, marks I am making very much follow the ones I make in other media. Organic forms, merging, spreading… it seems impossible for me to paint anything straight or angular. I’m not happy with the palette I’m using, having bought limited tubes because I wanted good paint rather than a large range of colours. So I have a set of warm primaries, a Prussian blue (because I love it) and titanium white. For some reason I’m not (yet?) mixing in the white, but using it to paint pure white lines once the rest of the paint is dry. Currently I am looking at twenty-odd small paintings on canvas, paper, board… trying it all out to see what happens. It’s an interesting tangent, and I am enjoying it, but I don’t think it will last long. I think these are the reasons:

1. I like a clean studio.
2. Acrylic is just plastic, and I cannot reconcile my other work with this. I use old fabric, reclaimed stuff. The work I am doing with The Fish Collective is about not using plastic. I do feel I needed/wanted to do it, but I don’t think I will be buying more acrylic paint.
3. The bit I like best is the drawing over the top. So why does it need to be acrylic? Watercolour is more sustainable. I think I might see, after this little tangent, if I can do something similar with watercolours…
4. My skin is old and dry. Multiple washings of pots, brushes, hands, table etc means my hands feel horrible.
5. Not sure it’s offering me anything extra…