I can’t believe how well this watercolor sketch I did a few years ago illustrates an alien cloning bath. The warmth with steam rising in the left foreground, the bleak winter weather in the background.
Earth Fall, 12
Category: Other Media
Brain/Mind
Getting my mind back after an anesthetic, even one of only 25 minutes duration was always going to be an interesting experience. One of my tests for regaining normal brain power is doing a crossword puzzle, and I have to confess that seven days after the fact, I’m still floundering in that respect. I successfully solved the Decoder Puzzle but am having a lot of trouble thinking up the required words for the Crossword Puzzle.
The eight letter US state had to be Arkansas in the end. Delaware just didn’t give me the right letters.
I remember my mother, Hendrika, complaining about a fuzzy brain after an operation in her eighties. It took her fully three weeks to remember, after knitting four or five false starts, how to knit socks. When she did finally remember the pattern, she never knitted anything else apart from 10 cm squares in the last three years of her life.
A few of Hendrika’s grandkids wearing her socks. She knitted about a thousand pairs in her later eighties, donating them to charitable groups after the family were supplied.
It has been suggested that as eldest daughter it would be fitting that I undertook that same project, but I’m afraid I might’ve built up a bit of steam and blown that suggestion out of the water. Seriously? I love knitting, but don’t have my mother’s fortitude to be knitting the same pattern over and over, and for years on end producing two or three pairs a week.
In fact, I like to invent patterns as I go. I started on a vest with the new yarn. Knitted a few experimental squares but decided in the end to go with diamonds. More on that project in a post.
Knitting
Treated myself to some new yarn …
And the beginning of a new project. This little knit is a trial piece … can I knit a square by starting with a 4 cm centre and pick up stitches at each corner every round?
It’s working so far, though not yet looking particulrly tidy at the corners. I like how the patterning seems to be twisting. I haven’t worked out yet why it’s doing that.
When I imagined it the sides growing from the centre were straight. It’s possible that something totally different will eventuate if/when I knit a square all in purl. Wild times ahead.
Painting Over A Collage
My painting of the week is nowhere near done. Credible mountains, white snow, a melting glacier and refections in the lake at the base are the objectives, so far anyway.
An unusual start has made several of the objectives quite hard to achieve. While painting with water colours paper towels and or paper tissues are vital for mopping up spills or too much water/paint.
So you get patterns on these used scraps that are too good to just throw. I glued a bunch of such in my A4 art notes book, using some 50% acrylic varnish I happened to have standing around.
When thoroughly dry, I started painting. I used gouache for the snow and will probably regret that. Could’ve used water colour ground. Some parts of the reflections are looking good. Everything in the foreground needs greying down.
The long steep rocky slope into the water is of course a wrong reflection, can’t be helped. By me, anyway. The boulder and its reflection need toning down a bit but the way the water ripples just there … I like very much!
Doing this painting I’m reminded again that keeping a scrap of paper to dab on all the colours I’m using, for a record, would’ve been a good idea. But I forgot. Never mind, I shall wing it.
Earth Fall, 8
This photo is not a double exposure, but a reflection looking into a kitchen window curtained with insect screening with the reflections of trees and shrubs behind the photographer. However I did it. An effective, if mysterious, image symbolizing Claire’s and Nalbo’s shed in their tea-tree forest. But lol, the vegetation nothing like tea-tree foliage.
Test Painting
The minute I painted a 25% strength hi gloss acrylic glaze over these stilt dancers, to see what would happen, this became my test painting.
The glossiness of the glaze was cut right back I was glad to discover. The suggestion to glaze came from johnlovett.com …. I may have said before that I’m not keen on framing pictures behind glass.
I have a couple of paintings on the go where I’m scared to touch the good stuff with more water, and so destroy them. though they bothneed more work. What to do?
Got the test painting out. Touched up cartain areas with acrylic paints. Let them dry overnight. Did it work? Did the acrylics rub off? Yes for the first question. No for the second.
The dark red fronds were overpainted with acrylics. The deep gold ditto. The greenish base, also. And none of it, upon scratching, comes off.
So, I’m good to go with sealing my Geriatric Aviatrix, and touching up her scarf with acrylics, because touching her up with water color over gouache might be a disaster …
‘Spatter and Spray’
… is a way of painting with watercolors, I’ve discovered. And I’m in the throes of experimenting using the technique.
First came across it on Susan Cornelis’s blog. https://susancornelis.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/googleeye.jpg
So I’ve fallen in love with granulating paints. My first effort was Miss Tabitha…
Ordered a couple more tubes of granulating paint and washed out a fine spray bottle originally used for a deodorant.
Second, this fish. I call it a bottom feeder, but may rename it … I’m having so much trouble getting this from my mobile … might have to do magic. Like, abracadabra … OK I’ve got it. Ended up saving it to the desktop … isn’t she beautiful? A spatter and spray painting barely touched up. Well, OK, I painted the scales. The rest is dabbed. Not yet sealed.
This is the top half of my third effort. I’ll tentatively call it The Aviatrix. The bottom half of this painting is still a problem. one thing is for sure, I’m learning a lot about gouache.
It’s hard to believe what you can get from spattering paint onto the paper then spraying it with water. But that’s only the first layer. You let it dry, then the next day, if the pattern you have doesn’t yet suggest anything to you, you do it again. Like I did with this one. The third day, this aviatrix lay there waiting for me. I painted some of the areas to increase that likeness and here she is.
The bottom half of her face needed work of a different sort. After my efforts first with gesso, then with gouache that’s still in the thought-pan, and another post.
As well as the spatter and spray technique, I’m experimenting with sealing my watercolor paintings with an acrylic varnish. I hate the look of paintings behind glass or the whole process of framing. Miss Tabitha has been varnished and the look is good.
And plus, I don’t have enough wall space to hang everything I paint. Nor will I foist amateurish experiments on my nearest and dearest. So, most must be stored. Varnishing them seems like a good option.
The varnish I’m using is water-based so easy to cut. A mixture of 25% acrylic varnish in 75% water seems to be working pretty well. Ideally this should be sprayed on but since I’m still only experimenting, I’m laying the varnish on the painting with a watercolor mop brush. A time-consuming procedure but the only one I can afford at the moment.
Rita de Heer 
