Inside Out, Outside In

John Lennon once described Paul McCartney's song Hello Goodbye as '3 minutes of meaningless contradictions'. I can't say that "Inside Out Outside In" was inspired by that song, but it certainly could have been. The idea I was having at the time is that some people feel good inside while things around them are going badly, while others feel bad inside while everything around them is going well. Make sense? In the painting, the good feelings are represented by warm colours and interior space, while the bad feelings are represented by the cold colours and tumultuous outdoor space. I would like to write a bit about fixing mistakes (as this painting had more than a few to fix!). I did not like the length of the limbs on the characters, the legs seemed to short originally. to fix that, I put a dark version of the characters colour on the feet to extend the legs. It is easy to put dark colours on top of light colours. More difficult is to remove dark colours. To do so, one must 'lift' paint from the paper. If you use good quality paper (Arches or Windsor newton) this should be no problem. Get a fresh brush with some clean water on it and dab the area you want to lift. Now dry your brush on a paper towel and lift the water off your mistake spot. Keep working it like that, then dab it a bit with your paper towel. This technique can also be used intentionally to create clouds, tree trunks, eyeballs.

Inside Out, Outside In, watercolour 15 x 22" cold press, 2007 (No. 1951)