Sigh.
Sometimes what seems like a good idea goes completely awry.
“I know!” I thought to myself, inwardly, “I’ll create a watercolour painting. What could go possibly wrong?” I then realised that I’d said, or rather thought, those immortal words that preceded something which didn’t quite turn out as it ought.
Onwards and upwards, I always say, and warts and all, I carried on regardless.
I got my watercolour pad, my watercolour paints and my watercolour water.
“Just do it!” I urged myself. “Don’t bother with the outline in pencil. Just do it!” So I started. With yellow, I created a flowery shape, and then filled it in, adding more reds and oranges to the yellow to bring in the different tones. For the bee, I added a little brown into the mix and painted a splodge just above the larger splodge which was intended to be a flower.
Once I was happyish with the two splodges, I wasn’t happy with the vast chasm of white that separated them on the bevelling and crinkling paper.
“Ooh.” I thought as I desperately tried to hold the paper flat. The wet paint upon the paper was causing the curling, so I reached for my hairdryer (which, since my haircut, I haven’t needed to use for a while!) and switched it on.
Switched it on to temperatures that would seem hot compared to the centre of the Sun. I couldn’t believe it! Steam started coming off the drying paint. It could have been smoke, but I’m going with steam. The paint was drying, which was good. The paper was still trying to wrap itself into knots which wasn’t so good.
Eventually, I was happy with the dry paint, and had managed to keep the paper somewhat smooth, and still rectangular in shape.
I needed green to fill in the chasm. I started with a yucky green and filled in the spaces, and then painted over it with a far more greener green. And then, just to add varying amounts of light and dark, I mixed some black with the green and smeared this around the yellow splodges as well. I made some leaf-like shapes, but I wasn’t really bothered what they looked like as they were just meant as a bit of background colour and nothing else.
Once I’d finished with the green, I wasn’t happy with the yellow, so decided to use my white pen to mark a few edges and create a few highlights here and there.
Only the white pen decided not to work very well. The instructions on the side said to shake the pen, and then press down the nib to allow the white to flow. I managed the get as much outlining of the petals done, before the pen really started playing up. I got the pen going once more and added a shine to the bee’s eye, and a few fluffy bits when the pen stopped again. I shook the pen. Nothing. I pressed the nib. Nothing. I shook the pen again, and white splotches went everywhere. All over the wall, all over the table. All over me. And all over the flower.
The unfortunate thing was that I wanted spots of white to be around the centre of the flower, but nowhere else. And certainly not anywhere that wasn’t included in this painting.
I managed to scrape away some of the unwanted largest splot, which landed almost where I wanted the smaller splots to be, but there is no getting away from the fact that it is an unwanted splot. I’ve tried to make it look like a little shine on the petal, but nah. It doesn’t quite work. Some of the other splots I managed to cunningly disguise, and others I just left them.
Finally, the pen, which I will NEVER use again, worked to allow me to scrape my name onto the painting… although I had to go over it four or five times so that it looked something like.
I then took some photos so I could include the masterpiece disaster on the blog. The photos emphasised the white, where I’d only intended it to be a subtle highlight here and there.
This photo I took second, and in pitch darkness with just the flash of the mobile camera:
This photo I took first, with the big light on and the flash of the mobile camera:
I needed the flash in both instants, well, because in the first one we wouldn’t see anything and in the second one I had a huge shadow of me hulking halfway across the picture. Luckily, the flash solved those problems. Well, I say solved, but beggars can’t be choosers.
This is the inspiration for the painting, I used it in a post the other day, but didn’t paint it exactly as. I wanted to do it a little different. And didn’t I just!
I returned my attention to the watercolour pad, to try and see why it decided to play up as well. I found that it wasn’t a watercolour pad at all, but a pad of heavyweight paper to be used for inks and markers and such. I must have picked up the wrong pad when I went to buy a few new ones a while ago… or someone had mixed it in with the others and I just grabbed three without checking. Lesson learned.
So, this little exercise was doomed from the very beginning. Even before the very beginning in fact.
I called this post ‘Natural Disaster’, which in all fairness it really isn’t. Unless you look at the painting.
Back to the drawing board, I suppose…
The Mansionic Perspective 
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