Blogtober 15

Dang.  Missed another day so far.  But, nothing hurt. 

What do you do when someone hands you something to paint because they want to give it as a gift,   the design seems simple enough,  seems like a piece of cake, so sure! you agree to do it...

Then you find out that you're painting a cylinder.  Made of cloth.  That collapses.  With wrinkles.  How do you iron that? Should you iron that?  Whatever you make on this canvas should not be painted thick enough to break off the cloth, and should be able to move.  Light weight paint right?

Airbrush. The lightest paint I know.

So, Lets hang this cylinder up, then weight it down so that the wrinkles hang out. To get nice color, continuous, around this tube, you have to allow it to turn as you work, to make the continuous lines.  This works pretty good.

Until the subject matter needs to be done, which happened to be some characters.  Its been awhile since I airbrushed, and it felt good to pick up this medium again.  I think I would have done a decent job, had the cylinder not decided to turn as the air comes out of my gun.  I am a two handed airbrusher: two hands steadying themselves.  Now I am minus one because I have to hold the tube to keep it from rotating.

Why didn't you block it from turning, you ask?  Well, anyone who has used an airbrush knows that putting down the airbrush in the middle of painting promotes clogs and stoppages.  Thin paint shooting through pinholes with large amounts of air which is drying it as fast as it sprays, waiting for two or three minutes while I try to find something and rig it up to work, would have stopped this session pretty much right there.  I didn't have anything handy at that point in time to do so.  If I would have found something, I would have to totally disassemble the airbrush, clean it all out, reassemble it and come back a half hour later.  Doable, but I didn't do it.

I wasn't satisfied.  I thought I could buy another one of these canvas hampers and try again.  Well, that would not be profitable, and I have done art enough to know that perhaps, this project was in an ugly middle stage.  Many times I will get half way through a painting or drawing and find myself ready to tear it up and quit.  If I don't, I am rewarded with something much better than what I imagined would have come out of the ugly duckling I saw earlier.  So....

I may have outlined the characters in airbrush, but I finished them by hand.  Yes, the paint is thicker. Yes, the whole tube is wrinklier.  Do I like it? I do, but I am not confident enough about it being good enough to give as a present.  Do I think she will like it??  I hope she is kind because it wasn't an easy project.

I would love to show it here, but I hate to show gifts before the recipient sees it.  At any rate, its done, I don't believe I would want to do it again, and I am handing it back to her tomorrow.  Wish me luck.

Stay tuned!