Category: Uncategorized

‘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.

Sleeping Impatiently

This something cats are capable of, lying right beside your chair and having a little doze while they wait impatiently for you to stop typing and get up already, it’s time to do xyz for me! ME! ME!

Like, get going old woman! It’s 10.30 AM! We are so far behind schedule I am quite out of sorts! And you threw a towel at me this morning when I hooked you to make you hurry up!

I’m not forgiving you until we are back on track!!!

Earth Fall, 5

Campfire

This image is a cut from an original photo by whom I don’t know from somewhere in the gloaming beside the virtual ocean where we go surfing when we open our laptops, switch on our desktops or scroll up our mobile phones. Cell phones to you, too.

It might even be a cut from an image from iStock where I purchased maybe thirty useful shots a few years back. I don’t remember. The fire is the important thing, though. As in, Claire builds a fire.

5. After the NightDownload

Cat Diary 37

We have started training. Apparently it’s a good idea for me to learn the meaning of some human words. This week we’re tackling “Sit” and “Come”.

When the old woman says “Sit” she means for me to go sit beside her on the couch. When I get there, I usually get some kibbles on her lap table, which is the board she lays over her knees to eat her dinner off or use her laptop on. “Sit” is easy.

“Come” is hard. She wants me to come right up to her feet before she puts the kibble down. When I have finished the kibble, she walks to the next place where she can perch on a chair or a bed, and says it again. “Come.”

I so don’t see the point. I’ll sit down and wait for the next kibble right where I am.

So then, next time we did “Come” I was really hungry, and it was worth my while to just follow her around the house, and be there before she even said the word. Too easy!

Probably she’ll make it hard again next time.

PS, I’m also learning to take selfies …

Earth Fall, 4

This story was written well before the no-no thing started about dogs dying in a story.

[I realize dogs are our best friends. I’ve owned a dog myself and it was a wrench to let her go when that became necessary. She was only nine years old when she developed a brain tumor and could not be saved.]

In this story one of the dogs briefly dies. So, I guess, you can take this as a spoiler alert.

4. Claire Steels HerselfDownload

Cat Diary 36

I’ve started learning to put my head in things to get the kibbles out. For a long time I didn’t like my whiskers to be bent backward. Now, because I know there’ll be a kibble at the end of my hunt, I can bear it.

It proves that we cats are just as good at delayed gratification as humans are, don’t you think?

The old woman craftily loads kibbles into my catnip pillow case … I swear I don’t know when … in between me looking here there and elsewhere it must be.

When I walk by the bundled up pillow case and I can smell a kibble or two, that’s when I pounce.

I can even get the kibbles out of a crumpled piece of paper now. We had a lady visiting last night. She said, “My place is much tidier than yours!”

The old woman laughed. She said, “Tthat shouldn’t be hard!“

It’s true that the whole floor is busy with activities, is that necessarily untidy?

Just having a nap here, waiting for my bedtime kibble storm. Once I’ve eaten them, it’s time for me to encourage the old woman to go to bed. She complains it’s too early, but when I bite her ankle she soon goes.

Night times I play with the toys the old woman has put on shelves. Which I can reach now, except for my bird. It lives high on a bookshelf.

The old woman says I can have it back when she’s taken its voicebox out. Apparently there’s a nasty battery in there that’d kill me if I chewed on it.